Eternal Fantasy
by Silently Watches
Summary: Without warning, the world changed in ways no Seer could predict. History erased. Maps rewritten. Modern life replaced by monsters, magic, and fantastical quests. Some people are happy with what the world has become, but others will stop at nothing to turn the clock back. Harry as a Final Fantasy–style adventurer, no game knowledge needed.
1. New Game

**Here goes a very different style of story for me. This is meant to be more lighthearted than what I've written in a while, closer to Faery Heroes or What Happens in Vegas than the Black Queen saga.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1  
** **New Game**

The bowl-shaped _utsuro-bune_ raced over the waves to a lonely isle, the twelve boys inside waiting impatiently for their arrival at Ryuudou Island. Students of Mahoutokoro all, they were traveling together for simple, united purpose.

"Suzuki, Watanabe!" Satō shouted from the 'front' of the boat. "Keep the spells going, you worthless bastards!"

Not that anyone watching would have been able to see any obvious unity.

The hollow boat eventually reached the island and knocked gently against the shore, and that was the signal for the dozen young men to jump out and either start wading to shore or simply appreciate the fact that they were once again on solid ground. Their relief was short-lived, however, and in the predawn light they moved towards the old and abandoned Shinto shrine at the middle of the island. They did not have much time to set up the ritual before someone noticed they were missing from the school.

As was often the case with young men, the motivation for their early rise was entertainment. A Low-Born friend of theirs had come back to school after the end of winter vacation and would not stop talking about a game of some kind that had come out in the Commoner's World, through from the way he was talking it was not a game like go or shogi. No, _Eternal Fantasy_ was a game that Commoners played on their overlarge picture frames, one where the player could choose from several different characters and go around fighting monsters with weapons or – and here was the important part – _magic_.

Between the allure of seeing just what laughable ideas Commoners had about magic and the fact that their friend would not shut up about the game, Satō and the other boys had decided to feed their curiosity. Buying one of these 'consoles' was not an option, though. They were students of Mahoutokoro, the greatest school of magic in the world! They could do it better. Instead of simply watching this game, they would immerse themselves into it.

They were going to bring it to life here on this island.

"This is your show, Zhang," Satō said once they stood in the middle of the shrine.

Zhang Wei did not shake his head or scowl, but that was not to say he did not want to do so. Satō and his gang of miscreants had made it clear they thought they were doing him a favor by inviting him along for this project of theirs. He knew that was not really the case. They had no interest in him personally, the lone Chinese student attending Japan's foremost school of magic. The only reason – the _only_ reason – they asked him to join them was because he was the best of the sixth-years in the onmyouji class, and they would need his knowledge and expertise in the sealing script to get this off the ground.

Pulling a binder from his bag, Wei flipped through it to the design he had spent the last three nights working on, giving up on sleep so he could finish it and still have time for the rest of his homework. He wanted this to work as much as the other boys did, though not for the same reason. They wanted to experiment with their friends' new toy, but ultimately they would get bored and move on to something else. He, on the other hand, had read about the story within this game, and once the others had gotten bored he would have it all to himself.

A world where he was the hero who saved the world? That was appealing beyond words considering how these Japanese devils treated him. Especially since he had added details to the ritual absent from the game itself that would let him reap the _rewards_ of being said hero.

"Here," he said, giving Satō and Tanaka the sheets of paper he had duplicated for them. "These need to be painted on the walls at thirty degree increments. I'll work on the floor portion. That's the most important part, and the part that cannot have any mistakes. Don't bother me," he said with a glare at Tanaka, who had never before passed up an opportunity to do just that.

It took an hour for the walls and floor to be cleared of debris, scoured, and have the ring and spokes of script painted on them, and the sun was cresting over the horizon when they were finished. "Hurry it up, Zhang," Satō ordered.

Did the Japanese not teach their children patience? He held out his hand in silent command, and with not a little grumbling Satō dropped the grey plastic box onto his palm. Stepping lightly into the middle of the circle, he set it down and moved out of the way.

"You're sure this is going to work?" asked Suzuki, looking around nervously.

"It will work," Wei said, the questioning of his abilities stinging his pride. "Three dragon lines intersect at this temple. Earth itself will provide the energy to keep it running. All we have to do is give it the first bit of magic to start everything. Furthermore, the way Commoners made this is similar to how we use sealing script. The two will synergize with each other, reinforcing the effect and stabilizing the new world."

"And it won't leak out?"

"Not in the slightest. That is what the script on the walls is for. It will concentrate the power in this room and open a gateway of sorts to the world described in that box."

That appeared to mollify the worrying boy, and at Satō's direction they all spaced themselves out equally distant and standing perfectly in between the lines of script. "Three, two, one," Satō muttered, and they began the chant that would pour their magic into the ritual space. The characters glowed white, then red, and the air began to waver with ghostly images visible just beyond.

"How much longer?" Watanabe muttered, breaking off his chant for a second to complain.

"Just a little more," was Wei's reply, though he had to wonder. With twelve wizards, they should have already given the ritual more than enough magic to open the gateway. His calculations had indicated that if all of them contributed equally, they should still have enough strength left to power the charms on the _utsuro-bune_ and return to the school. Instead, he was pushing his limits right now.

With a sizzling snap, the air in front of them ripped itself open, and they had their first glimpse into another world. A windy world, Wei had to concede, for a strong gust blew through the widening portal and was nearly pushing him backwards. Was it a byproduct of the pocket world forming? Or perhaps the winds would stay strong, maybe even create a constant gale around the island. It was a good thing that Ryuudou Island was invisible to Commoners, but that would not change the fact that the government would have very stern questions for them all about any new permanent storms.

Tanaka fell to the ground with a shout of surprise, and Wei along with everyone else glanced over. Tanaka tried to stand again, but the stones beneath his feet shifted and sent him tumbling over again.

Stones that had been solid when they arrived.

Wei looked around and stared when he saw that it was not just around Tanaka that this was happening. The entire floor was starting to crumble, dust being carried away by the winds, as were the walls and even the ceiling. "What did you do, Zhang?!" shouted Satō.

"I don't know! This shouldn't be happening!" He grabbed his binder again and had to turn his back to the portal to stop the intensifying wind from blowing away all his notes. There were pages and pages of calculations to go through, and any mistake could be the cause for something to go wrong.

"Opening the portal, manifesting the people inside, pulling from the dragon lines, shield effect to protect us from physical injuries, magic surrogates…" He flipped back and forth between the notes, ignoring another boy stumbling and falling next to him. "Wait, found it!"

"What is it?!" Satō shouted to be heard over he howling winds.

"I inverted this section of the script! I was recalculating things last night to make it more efficient, and I think I forgot to flip the page around when I was copying it down! It's…" Wei's eyes widened as he realized just where that mistake was located. "It's in boundary field."

"What?!"

"It's a problem with the boundary field! It's supposed to be contained in this room, but I inverted the sequence! This is all pointed _outwards_!" This was a good thing, though! There was no way they had given it enough power to cover that much area, so as soon as it burned away everything they gave it, it would collapse onto itself.

Satō grabbed his arm. "Didn't you say it was tied to the dragon lines?"

He had. Dragon lines covered the whole world. It was the lifeblood of the planet as a whole, the source of magic. It was why he tied the portal and the new realm behind to it, so they would be self-sustaining. It was supposed to pull magic from the dragon lines, but of the quick calculation he did in his head was right, what he had instead managed to do was introduce the code of the game into them. It would flow beneath the planet's crust like a poison, corrupting everything it touched.

"The portal is blowing outwards. It'll propagate through the dragon lines," he whispered in horror. "We're just the center of the effect."

With a great groan, the world tore itself apart.

* * *

Eli walked through the camp, nodding to himself at the short Kobolds huddling on their knees in the iron cages. This was what, eighteen? Twenty? A good haul for a quick smash and grab. He and his boys had needed all of ten minutes at most to break through the wooden gate to their little camp and grab everyone they could find before vanishing back into the morning mists. They would make a tidy profit at the mines within the South Dragon Ridge.

It was about the only thing Kobolds were good for. They could not be trusted to do any respectable work since they were liars and cheats, and they certainly would never win any beauty pageants. Green skins, long noses, pinched chins. The big eyes might have been so they could try to look innocent, but all it did was give them an even more evil appearance than they did already.

"Why are you doing this?" a voice asked, and Eli glanced down to find a young Kobold glaring up at him. Another little monster grabbed its shoulders and tried to shush it, but it continued, "We weren't doing anything to you. Why are you taking us?"

"That's just the way the world works, lassie."

The kid blinked, and its broad face twisted into something even uglier than it normally was. "I'm a _boy_."

Really? With a voice that high? He shrugged. "You all look alike. Anyway, they need bodies up at the mines to dig out silver and mythril, and you folks are the best choice they got."

"Then why don't _you_ dig all that up if you want it so much?!"

"'Cause mines are dangerous. People die down there all the time. You lot aren't human, though, so no big loss if you bite it, you know?"

A yell came from the other side of one of the tall tents they had set up, and Eli walked around only to pull his head back when a chunk of wood flew past. He chanced another glance and cursed. "Adventurers. Great."

The burly blond who was invading their camp could be nothing else. Regular humans were nowhere near strong enough to shatter shields by throwing firewood at people.

Still, this was not a total loss. The axe the guy carried and the hodgepodge armor he wore was proof they were dealing with a Knight, and they were nice and slow. Eli pulled a bandana off his left forearm to reveal a twisted character fused into the skin just below his wrist. The Mark was dull, but a moment's effort had it brightening up, and he sighed as the speed of the Ninja coursed through his veins. He did not use his Mark often because in all honesty the strange power that had been revealed with the Transition that changed the whole world ten years ago felt alien at the best of times, but in situations like this it was too useful to ignore. All he had to do was sneak behind the Knight and slip his blades through the armor's gaps—

"Frost."

The word hit his mind a split second before the ground around him burst into inch-long shards of that went flying everywhere. He was already trying to get out of the way when the icicles buried into his shirt and pants. The impact and cold sapped strength from his Mark, and while he was not significantly injured it would not take many more blows like that before he was. He had to deal with the Sorcerer before that happened.

Footsteps fell loudly behind him, and he spun and dashed at the sound, both daggers at the ready. They should have buried themselves into soft flesh, but instead there was the ring of steel against steel when they met and were stopped by a slim sword.

Lightning danced along the blade, and he jumped back with a curse. Not a Sorcerer. A Fencer. They were even more annoying. At least Sorcerers and Clerics had the courtesy to suck at straight physical combat.

A dark-haired youth wearing glasses stepped back as well, the red coat Fencers flaunted flapping with the motion. The boy scowled. "You know, we almost didn't take this contract. We thought you were just bandits. That would have been bad enough. But no, you had to be _slavers_. Dud's never going to let me hear the end of this—"

Eli readied himself while the boy was nattering away, and then he struck. Fencers were fast, but not as fast as Ninjas; one of his daggers held the rapier back while the other scored a stab into the Fencer's gut. The boy grimaced but pushed back, and again electricity flared. This time it coursed up the knife in Eli's left hand, and his arm fell to his side. Once more Eli danced away, trying to shake some feeling into his numb hand, but the Fencer pursued. Glancing blows were all the boy landed, but that was all the spelled steel needed to make his muscles twitch and quiver. A luckily swipe at his legs sent Eli to the ground, and his skin tingled as his Mark's defense reached its breaking point.

The Fencer propped his sword against his shoulder, the lightning caressing him harmlessly. "I'd say don't feel bad for losing, but, you know, slaver. I don't care if you feel bad. Just don't be surprised. You won't be the last scum who falls to the Dursley Brothers."

The… "Who?"

A glare replaced the boy's smirk. Pulling his arm back, he slugged Eli in the face with the sword's elaborate guard, and darkness descended.

* * *

 **I hated writing that first scene, just so you know. It is one of those boring scenes that is vital to set up the story but otherwise exists in more or less a narrative vacuum.**

 **Oh well. At least we got a first look at our real protagonists. More backstory (** _ **much**_ **more) will come in the next several chapters, but for now just know that there is a significant time skip between the two scenes.**

 **Oh oh oh! Anyone who can guess what classic job Harry uses gets an internet cookie. A hint: it's my absolute favorite Final Fantasy job, but one that never gets implemented well.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	2. Character Creation

**"Harry's clearly a Red Mage":** Correct! I'm glad I didn't make it confusing. I love me a Red Mage, to the point that in a game I'm currently playing (Bravely Default), I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make the Red Mage a viable main class for the late game. And yes, as The Sinful and Secundum figured out, I have also rolled some elements of the Mystic Knight/Spell Fencer into the class to make it just that little bit more useful.

 **SimplyLokajad:** I'm aiming for 80-120 thousand words for this story, though with my muse's habits, who knows?

 **TinaMaki, Byakugan789:** *snrk* Guys, Eternal Fantasy isn't a real game. I just didn't want to copy Final Fantasy elements wholesale.

 **DrunkenGrognard:** Not exactly FF5, though that was one of several games I'm drawing inspiration from.

* * *

 **Chapter 2  
** **Character Creation**

Dudley walked out of the constable's office whistling and tossing a bag of coins up and down in his hand. Behind him, Harry shook his head at the display. "300 dimma. We saved twenty people – including a bunch of kids – from slavers, and they only paid us three hundred for it," he reminded his cousin.

"We didn't know they were slavers when we took the job, either. We thought it was just another bandit cleanup. I'm not going to hold it against them for not upping the reward money. Besides, you're looking at this all wrong, Harry. Don't focus on whether or not we could have gotten more. Three hundred is still money we didn't have this morning. We're moving up in the world."

Speeding up, he snagged the bag out of the air and danced away from Dudley's grasping hand. "Half of which goes to pay for another week in the inn. Another seventy or so for food. Then there's the sightgrass we need to replace after you used it all up—"

"I wouldn't have _had_ to use it all up if you had just worked your magic and fixed my eyes."

"I did. The first three times. Then I warned you that if you wanted to pick a fight with a flock of dust birds, whatever happened was on you. I figured even you could spot the pattern that every time you attacked them, they threw up a dust storm to blind you and pecked at you for a while before flying away. _So_ ," Harry said, giving the bag a jingle, "after we take the cost to replace our items out, along with everything else we need the money for, we come out to… about thirty dimma. Fifteen, actually, since I don't trust you with my half. We're sure coming out ahead, all right."

"Yeah… about that…" Harry slowly turned his head to find Dudley giving him a slightly sheepish smile. "I was actually hoping to borrow a few coins off you, cuz. I've had my eye on a couple of new Clerics that showed up in town recently, and I figured I could try convincing one of them to hang out with us, maybe join up."

He rolled his eyes. "I think I saw those Clerics, too. They fit everything you look for in a prospective group member. Blonde, big tits, kind of ditzy. I'm all for adding a Cleric to the party, but you need to start picking them out with the head that's on your shoulders."

Dudley huffed but did not respond. This was an old argument between them, and one that Harry frankly had little hope would ever be resolved.

When it came to fighting, Dudley had it easy. His class was pretty straightforward. The Knight, someone whose one and only job was to hit the enemy and, if that did not work, hit them again but harder. It was easy to arm and armor since they had a natural talent for just about any weapon they laid their hands on. It fit Dudley perfectly; a clear path in front that he just had to walk down whenever they got in a fight.

That being said, Harry was pretty sure Dudley had somehow bullied the Whinging Spire into giving him a complicated class to make up for the Knight's simplicity. The Fencer, despite the name, was not meant to be a dedicated swordsman. It was more a jack of all trades. He could use a sword, true, but he also had access to a small spread of healing and offensive spells, and he could even combine the raw elements he wielded with the steel to do some impressive things, such as zap the slavers' leader through the man's knives. None of his talents were as strong as those of a spellcaster dedicated to one particular type of magic, but it gave him a lot of flexibility, and that was the root of his problem. With all the things he _could_ do, he sometimes had trouble picking out in the heat of the moment what was the thing he most _should_ do.

Harry and Dudley had talked many times over the years since they left their hometown about adding another caster to help take some of the workload, and he had pushed for a Cleric, someone who focused purely on healing and support spells. If they could find one, it would mean he could leave all the white magic to that person while he focused on throwing around fire and lightning to kill the monsters that wandered the wilds. The issue was that the Clerics the ran into inevitably ended up being girls Dudley was also attracted to. More than once Dudley had managed to sweet-talk the girls into their group and into his bed, but whenever the relationship soured – and it always did – their shiny new Cleric would storm off and leave them in the same position where they were before.

Two guys running around by themselves were not nearly enough for the major contracts that sometimes came through, the ones where large groups were called out to drive back migrating colossi or join forces for the yearly burning of the Twilight Woods just outside Edin. Those needed both strength of arms and reputation. Instead they were stuck with minor escort jobs and driving away brigands, which was not the path to fame and fortune.

"Look, Harry, we'll figure it out. We always do, don't we?" Dudley bumped Harry's shoulder with his own. "There's a lucky break out there with our names on it. It's just a matter of finding it."

"Well, we need to find it soon. The jobs are getting scarcer, you know. More and more Adventurers are piling in. Supply and demand, that's how economies work, and the supply is outpacing the demand." Even this contract was a gem in its own way. They had been in the constable's office the previous week getting another measly reward when the report came in, so they were able to volunteer to take care of the problem before it was posted to the Job Board.

"I know, I know." Dudley trailed off before clearing his throat awkwardly. "I actually got a letter about that from Mum last week. They're having issues with minor monsters and are looking for more guards."

Harry snorted. "That's their problem. I'm not moving back to Whinging Village. They could be the last paying job on Gaia, and I wouldn't do it. I'd rather starve out in the wilderness."

"Not to mention that Dad would try to actually murder you if he ever saw you again. Me, too, for that matter," Dudley added. " _Pretty_ sure Mum didn't tell him she was all but asking me to come back home."

He did not say that the invitation had been extended only to him and not to Harry. He did not need to.

* * *

"You're back!" exclaimed the Stellis girl behind the bar when he approached, the cat ears on top of her head perking up. "You were gone for so long that I— we were worried something had happened to you."

Harry shook his head and passed over five of the smaller coins from their reward to pay for a couple of bowls of stew and mugs of weak ale. "Job just took a little longer than expected, that's all."

She slipped the coins into her apron and put the food and drink on a small tray. "Maybe you could tell me about it sometime?" Sliding the tray closer to him, she moved her hand so that the tips of her fingers trailed briefly over his arm. "I'm free tonight, if you wanted…?"

He cleared his throat and did his best to ignore the way her ears wiggled despite her attempts to sound nonchalant. Her attempts to woo him were no secret to anybody. Her father, the owner of the pub, had given him a stern glare when they spotted each other after the first time it happened. Her mother's eyes, on the other hand, had looked him up and down in a more speculative fashion, and that was honestly the scarier of the two.

Quickly taking the tray before this could become any more awkward, he made his escape and carried dinner over to the table where Dudley was already waiting. His cousin was not paying attention to Harry, though, instead focused on an image wavering above his palm. It was Dudley, but instead of the hodgepodge of armor that they had scraped together with their meager funds his miniature proudly wore a suit of thick plate armor, a halberd clasped in his hands. An image of what could be.

"Thinking about switching out to Valkyrie?"

Dudley jumped in surprise, clearly too lost in his own thoughts to have noticed Harry's approach. "Nah," he said, the image fading away. "I don't want to have to retrain everything from scratch."

But was that the only reason, Harry could not help but wonder as he watched the glow from Dudley's Mark dim to nothing. When they had climbed the Spire near Whinging Village and touch the crystal housed at the top in order to receive their Marks, they had each been presented with a choice of two classes. Dudley could have been a spear-wielding Valkyrie instead of a Knight, but Valkyries required the kind of equipment that a small village out in the middle of nowhere simply could not provide, which was in large part the reason he had gone for the Knight instead.

This decision of which class to settle into was not available only once. At any time, Dudley could change his mind and transition into the Valkyrie's shoes. The downside of doing so now was that his Knight had matured with him, new abilities manifesting now and again and his strength increasing to superhuman levels. Those benefits were part of the class itself, and if he changed out of the Knight they would vanish unless he picked it up again. And, of course, they still did not have the funds necessary to get everything he would need to be safe and effective should he switch classes.

That was one dilemma that Harry had thankfully never had to deal with. His alternate class was the Bard, and he had no interest in being relegated to a pure support role. Not to mention, he and the Bard's signature fiddle just did not get along.

Dudley waved away his concern and gave him a nasty smirk. "On to more important things. Michelle got her claws in you yet? Last I checked, it looked like her mum might even give you the pub if you ask nice."

So Dudley had not been completely oblivious to his exchange with the bar maid.

"Hardy har. You're hilarious."

"No, you want hilarious? That would be what she'd do if I told her about all the other girls already after you for kittens."

Harry stared at him in astonished horror before scowling. "Don't you _dare_." Michelle was not the first Stellis girl who had made her attraction obvious. Not even in the first dozen. Dudley had a type he pursued, and unfortunately Harry had his own type that did the pursuing. It was not limited to girls his own age, either, though thankfully older Stellis women's attentions generally were not so sexually charged. The bartender and local gossip monger back in Whinging Village, for instance, had also been uncommonly friendly to him from the very first time they ran into each other when he was a kid and had even been the one person to encourage him and Dudley to head out and make their livings as Adventurers.

He had no idea what it was that always seemed to catch their attention, though. About the only possibility he had definitively ruled out was Dudley spiking his soap with catnip.

"Eat your food." The stew sloshed in the bowl but did not spill as he shoved Dudley's share to him. Harry nodded at the stack of flyers from the Job Board at the corner of the table. "Anything good in there?"

His cousin seemed to understand that it was time for business again, though Harry knew he had not yet heard the end of this. He probably never would, even if the names and faces changed. "Mostly it's the same stuff as always. One of the Alchemists wants someone to guard him when he goes out to collect herbs. People vanishing along the road from here to Cambridge. Tackling a pride of cat sith that made their home in somebody's barn. And then…" Dudley pulled a sheet of yellowed paper from the bottom of the stack and snapped it with a dramatic flourish. "I found this one."

He was in no mood for games and just waved for Dudley to get on with it.

"Somebody's organizing a raid a couple of days from now. Apparently there's an old manor a few kilometers outside Scunth that's infested with monsters, and whoever this guy is is hiring people to clean it out and bring stuff back. _'Wanted: Sixty talented Adventurers. Objective: Exterminate monsters within manor and retrieve valuable objects left behind by previous owner. Reward: One-hundred dimma'_."

Harry scoffed around a mouthful of stew. "A hundred? That's it? Waste of time—"

"Wait, wait. Had to take a breath." That was a lie if Harry had ever heard one, the grin on Dudley's face making that clear. "Hundred dimma _per object_. Apparently anything anybody brings out that isn't one of the objects he's looking for can be kept and sold to a pawn shop or something. Here's the weird part. What this guy is really interested in are a couple of things called 'Earth wands'."

Dudley nodded at Harry's look of confusion and turned the paper around so he could see the illustration included with the contract. They were not the thick rods with the decorations and etchings he was familiar with, the kind of wands used by Sorcerers. This picture depicted something thin and slightly pointed, with a handle on the wider end just large enough for one hand to wrap around it. And to make things even stranger was the fact that it was labeled an _Earth wand_. There had been no Sorcerers on Earth, nor any other class. Magic was unique to Gaia.

Dudley continued, "I don't know what they are either, but it's obvious he wants them bad. Bad enough that he's offering a full two thousand dimma a piece. Oh, and one more thing down at the bottom. _'Any reagents, consumables, equipment, or loose change other than those mentioned above will be the property of the Adventurer who acquires them'_. Nice of him to include that. Remember the last big raid we were part of?"

"Mm-hmm. Those Alchemists had us kill a massive nest of dire rats, and all so they could harvest the livers and make a huge profit off them while they paid us a pittance." There was just one problem with the clause in this contract. Equipment. Monsters, with extremely few and dangerous exceptions, did not carry equipment. People did. But if there were going to be armed squatters or thieves inside, that should have been mentioned in the contract itself.

He shook his head. Most likely he was overthinking it. The way the clause was written, it would include more or less anything anyone was going to stumble upon. It was probably meant to be just that, an innocent catch-all to conclude a very generous offer. "Finding one of those wands would be really nice. Two thousand dimma? That's living expenses for almost ten weeks."

"Plus anything else we find. Three special objects, and we match what we earned today."

"True enough. How many people have already accepted the offer?" he asked.

"Forty-four. Wait," Dudley added when the number writing in golden ink in the top right corner shimmered and changed. "Forty-seven."

"And a maximum of sixty people. If we don't jump on this, we'll be locked out." There was no reason Harry could see to pass up an opportunity like this, not with a few hundred dimma all but guaranteed and the temptation of another two thousand just sitting there. He laid a finger on the paper, and with shared nods they accepted the contract. A wave of golden whorls, almost like a spiderweb woven of light, swept away from where their fingertips rested and over the page before the paper itself vanished. The instant the flyer was gone, Harry could feel knowledge lodging itself in the back of his mind, vague memories and a sense of premonition that would lead them to the manor at the proper time.

"What did I say, Harry? This is our lucky break. It has to be." Raising up his mug, Dudley waited impatiently until Harry raised his own cup to complete the toast. "Look out, world. The Dursley Brothers are coming, and we're bloody unstoppable."

Harry snorted. "Why do we call ourselves that, anyway? We aren't brothers, and I'm not a Dursley. It'd be the Dursley Cousins if anything. Or maybe we could use _my_ name instead for a change."

"Potter Cousins? Dursley and Potter, professional arse-kickers?" Dudley mulled over the options for a few seconds before shaking his head. "Nah, it just doesn't have the same _ring_.

"Besides, it doesn't matter if the name isn't totally true. Soon enough, when we've made a reputation for ourselves? No one is going to care."

* * *

 **I...** _ **think**_ **I've explained everything so far. Let me know if there's anything still super-confusing. The first few chapters will be info-dump-y by necessity, but I'm trying to make this new world's introduction as painless as possible.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	3. Fetch Quest

**Impstar, Dadycoool:** You two are bad and you should feel bad.

 **Greensword101:** Patience, young Grasshopper, patience. Yes, I will expand on Harry and Dudley's past, but not for a few chapters yet.

 **Prodigal Knight, MidnightFenrir:** Luna actually won't appear in this story at all. I know, le gasp. I had some ideas for what to do with her, but it isn't something I could introduce without going far out of my way. Better just to let her go off and do her own thing.

 **Tenzo51:** The Transition (the ritual that screwed everything up) took place in January 1987. Harry and Dudley were six, and that was ten years ago. Now, as for "everybody forgetting about the old Earth"… Not even close. That's actually going to play a very big role in the story as soon as I've finished the setup.

* * *

 **Chapter 3  
** **Fetch Quest**

The village of Scunth, in Harry's eyes, might be large enough to warrant the description, but if so it was just barely. It was really more a few large extended families who worked together to share the burden of farming the wheat he could see growing in the fields. The highlight of the area was the square set in front of a large mill and storehouse, and if the staring children were any indication, they rarely had visitors at all, let alone in the numbers that were riding through today.

Still, their business was not in the town. The information that had been poured into their heads when they accepted the contract instead led them down a long-overgrown path along a patch of woodlands that had yet to be slashed and burned to increase the size of the fields. It was perhaps another kilometer or so down that path that they started seeing clumps of Adventurers standing around and waiting for someone to explain things. No one had tried to get a jump on the job yet, mostly because it became obvious once the entire crowd was in sight that the manor they were supposed to search had somehow vanished.

"Looks like he got the full sixty," Dudley remarked, looking over their competition.

"With the kind of money our mysterious employer offered? I'm surprised nobody's getting beaten away with sticks." Pulling on the reins of his rented mustid, he guided the oversized ferret to a nearby cluster of saplings so he could hitch it. He had heard growing up that people used to ride horses to get around, and then they were replaced by the automobiles that he only vaguely remembered, but both of those things had been wiped away by the Transition ten years previously. On Gaia, if anyone wanted to get around quickly they needed either to walk or ride a mustid.

Mustids, unfortunately, were carnivorous, so if they were not tied up they would run off in search of prey. Since these were rented out for this journey, if they went back to Glasgow without their rides, they would be forced to pay to replace the mustids, and the beasts were not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

The assembled Adventurers were starting to get antsy when a cart pulled by a couple of bison came around the corner and rolled through the group only to stop at the far side. Three men hopped out of the back, presumably bodyguards if their thick leather vests and the broad swords at their sides were anything to judge by, though what use three guards would be if a couple dozen Adventurers decided to attack Harry had no idea. Another young man dressed in a gaudy cape climbed over the front seat into the back of the cart, and Harry's assumption of the guards' purpose was confirmed.

The blond man who now stood in the cart adjusted his floppy hat and thumped his cane between his feet. "Good morning! I'm glad you all showed up. You should have read the contract thoroughly before agreeing to it, so I will be brief. Your job is to find artifacts within the manor and bring them back to me. Of utmost importance, you are looking for wands." He bent down to pick up something at his feet, and when he straightened up he held a wooden box. A vigorous shake let them all hear the rattle of metal on metal. "This box contains two thousand dimma. I have five of them, one for each wand. How you acquire the wands is not my concern, only that you bring them back here to me. And before anyone gets clever, I _will_ be able to spot a fake. I have no interest in any cons. I want the wands and the other objects inside. Does anyone have any questions before you begin?"

"Yeah, I got one!" shouted a voice from near the back. "You keep talking about this manor of yours, but I don't see shite!"

The client reached up to rub the bridge of his nose for a moment, then he lowered his right hand to his mouth and whispered something. A ring on that hand glowed with a pure white light, and he held it up over his hand.

At the edge of the woods, the air squirmed and exploded into a whorl of purple smoke. The smoke swept backwards into the forest, and when it faded away it was to reveal an entirely different scene. A manor house indeed stood before them. It was not the most inviting place Harry had ever seen, however; once it might have been beautiful, but it had clearly been abandoned and left to fester. It was now dilapidated and all the more imposing, its shadow burdened with the threat of violence.

"Any other questions?" the client asked, drawing their attention back to him. "Preferably intelligent ones this time."

"What is so important about these wands in the first place?" a knot of Sorcerers asked.

"They are valuable to me, and I am the only person who will pay you for them as anything more than a curiosity. They do not work with offensive magics, so they are of no use to you. There is nothing else about them is relevant to your task. Find them; bring them to me. That's it."

A bald Monk next to Dudley coughed once. "Any idea what kind of beasties we're going to find inside?"

"Finally, a decent question. The last time I was here, I encountered several zombies and ghosts. I expect there are many, many more where those came from." A groan came from the group at large at the thought of facing off against a horde of the undead. "I would also advise you not to make assumptions of the layout based on the outside of the house. The interior was completely different last time from the time before, and there were rooms that should not physically fit within the outer walls. I do not know how large the inside actually is."

Bigger on the inside than the outside? That would make the search more difficult. At least it also meant there would be plenty of room for everyone. From the outside, Harry would have been sure that there would be fights between the parties in short order as they fought over the finite number of artifacts. Now it would just be the monsters they had to contend with.

"I hate undead," he muttered with a sigh after a few more inconsequential questions had been asked and answered.

"You and me both, cuz."

Harry snorted at that. Dudley was scared of ghosts, had been ever since they were kids. He personally just thought hacking through them all would be tedious. At least the fact they were undead meant he could throw white magic at them and hurt them instead of heal them, but every drop of magic he used offensively was magic he could not use to patch them up later. "Just make sure you don't get yourself cursed again."

"One time," Dudley growled. "I've been cursed _one time_ , and you never let me forget it."

"That's because lugging your fat arse around afterwards that one time was more than enough for the rest of our lives. I don't have a spell to get rid of that, remember, and holy waters and panaceas are worth their weight in gold." The items were expensive to the point that they had a grand total of one panacea in their possession. It, at least, would get rid of any and status ailments, from the lowly blind and mute that interfered with sight and spellcasting to the more exotic effects like confusion, which made humans indistinguishable from monsters. Holy water was only good for the curse status, and the undead that were capable of casting such a spell were rare.

It was just their luck that they were about to head into a pit of exactly that.

Dudley hefted his axe, and Harry drew his rapier. Cold steel was not the most effective weapon here, but it was the best defense he had. His Wall spell would take some of the hits any lucky zombie scored on him, but that would cost him mana that would be far better used Curing everything to death. He would instead have to keep his wits about him and be able to block anything that got too close. And speaking of cold steel… "Dud, watch my back. Zombies and ghosts are one thing, but if there's a wight or heaven forbid a lich running around, they're going to come after me as soon as they realize I'm throwing around white magic."

"No problem."

The gate sealing off the manor slowly opened with an eerie creak, and the Adventurers poured inside. The dumber of the parties moved first around the grounds, presumably in the hope of finding a special artifact or even a wand on the grounds, but Harry and Dudley moved with the larger group into the manor itself. Their client had implied that he had been here before; anything immediately accessible he had already whisked away. They trailed into the first room and stared.

From the outside, the manor had been two stories high, maybe with some attic space on top. The entrance hall by itself was half again that tall, and Harry could see stairs farther back that went higher even than that. A multitude of doors were arranged in a random pattern between the front and the first of the stairs, as though someone had hacked up a number of houses into pieces and hastily glued them all into place. Glancing behind him revealed that those three stories of height each came with their own windows where again the outside had possessed only two, and the windows rattled with the rain that poured down on top of them. A boom of thunder echoed through the gigantic space.

As soon as the last Adventurer crossed the threshold of the manor, the doors slammed shut to block out the sunny day outside.

"What do you think?" Dudley asked, nodding his head towards the back of the room. "Stay down here, or head up?"

A very good question. Harry looked at the groups ahead and where they were moving. "Up, I think. It looks like most people are starting on this floor, which means more competition. As for the rest—"

"Yeah, I think I know what you're thinking. They're starting at the top and working their way down. Which means both of them are saving the stuff in the middle for later."

A nod, and they headed towards the stairs. On the way up Harry looked up and sideways a little bit. "Only four floors, it looks like. We start on the third and get what we can." They would have company sooner or later, but that was inevitable, even with all this space divided among sixty Adventurers. Not that it really mattered, though. Both he and Dudley carried belt pouches that could fit objects inside them no matter the size, but those bags were nonetheless limited by the total weight they could contain. Between just the two of them, even if they were the only ones on their floor, they still would not be able to pick up everything.

The other Adventurers would have the same limitation, which made this more than an issue of grabbing everything they could get their hands on. They needed to find smaller and lighter artifacts in order to carry out the most money at one time as they could, and they needed to prioritize the search for the wands. Opening the door on their landing and trying not to think too hard about the already open door ten feet or so to the side, they stepped into the hallway beyond.

"Harry?" Dudley asked, looking at a painting on the wall near the door. The man in the painting, amazingly enough, was looking back at him and sneering. Not 'the man was painted with a sneer on his face'. The man was actually moving _inside_ the painting and changing his expression. "Do you think this is what the guy meant when he was talking about special objects?"

"It's… Probably?"

"Okay. I'm taking it." With a touch of Dudley's hand on the frame, the entire portrait exploded into a rainbow of sparks that were sucked into the mouth of the pouch.

…Or they could just stuff whatever they ran across into their pouches without concern for the weight. But as a point in Dudley's favor, he had to admit that this was all but guaranteed to be one of the worthwhile artifacts, and it gave them an idea for what characteristics to focus on. Harry looked down the hallway again, this time focusing on the holes randomly knocked out of the walls. There had been nothing threatening in the main hall, which meant it was just about time for them to start running into monsters. "Dud, you see what I see?"

"Yeah, I see it. Want me up front?"

He shook his head. Better for him to be up front, at first anyway. It would make it easier to aim his spells if he did not have to fire them around his cousin's armored bulk. Besides, they had fought zombies and such before. Undead, the dumber ones anyway, tended towards either massed rushes or ambushes. They knew what to expect.

They walked down the hallway to the first hole, and Harry took a small breath before he kept going. His rapier's tip bobbed up and down, but he knew striking right now was useless. He could not say exactly where the first enemy was, even if he was all but certain where it would come out.

A skittering came from the wall.

He chanced a glance behind him and watched Dudley saunter past the hole as though he had not a care in the world. A rotten face surged out of the hole, the zombie launching its surprise attack, but they were prepared. Dudley planted his right foot on the ground and spun, his axe whipping out and circling back around. The steel landed squarely in the zombie's head, cleaving its skull in two. A dry, dusty rattling emanated from its chest, the heavy blow not enough to finish the thing off, though another swing was. Its semblance of life stripped away, the bones and wretched flesh collapsed into dust.

Harry turned around and clicked his tongue at the five – no, make that six – zombies crawling out of the walls ahead of them. Sometimes he hated being right. He raised his sword into a guarding position with his right hand; his left, on the other hand, traced out a quick five-pointed star in the air. "Blessed starlight, restore and refresh," he muttered, lining up his shot.

Magic, barring a Bard's songs and the odd not-quite-magic melee classes like the Knight enjoyed, was 'spun' into existence through the use of gestures and shapes. Each spell also had an incantation, though only the spell's name itself was necessary. The incantation took longer, but it also added power to the spell. A useful trick when he just needed some extra punch, or when he was splitting a spell up to hit multiple targets.

"Cure!"

A ball of pale green light formed in his left palm and split off as four jets that trailed sparkles in their wake. Those jets hit the zombies coming for Harry and Dudley square in the chest, and Harry forced himself not to look away from the disturbing sight of torn flesh rotting away at a thousand times normal speed. Skin and muscle fell away from bone to reveal dark, necrotic organs. In any living thing, the loss of so much of its body would have stopped it and sent it to the ground, but the foul magics that sustained the walking corpses were not so easily overcome.

Dudley ran around him and planted himself between Harry and the zombies, heedless of Harry's previous refusal. "Armor Up!" he yelled, and an ethereal second suit of armor flashed into existence around his body for just a moment before fading away. It was the most basic skill of a Knight, the ability to further decrease the impact of blows for a time. It would not be enough to withstand the zombies' attacks forever, but it would let him last a little bit longer.

It also gave Harry time to continue his casting without worry.

More jets of healing light flashed past Dudley and smacked into the undead, and now that they had something else to focus on Harry directed his spells at individual monsters. One blast, sometimes two, was all it took now for them to collapse into dust just as the one Dudley killed did. The blows his cousin dealt on his own did not hurt.

The last zombie fell, and this time Harry directed a healing spell at Dudley. Unlike the zombies, the scratches and blood on Dudley vanished as though they had never existed in the first place. "You didn't need to jump in front. I had it handled," he reminded the blond Knight.

"Sure you did," Dudley replied with a cocky smirk. He rolled his shoulders and started kicking the piles of dust, stopping to pick up the rare ethereal bone that had not completely disintegrated with the rest of the monster it had been attached to. These bones would do neither of them any good, but Alchemists and apothecaries were always happy to buy reagents or trade them for a discount on their wares. "Except we both know that you would've spent so much time defending yourself you'd get nothing else done. I don't tell you how to cast spells, Harry. That's your thing. Being big and buff is mine."

He shook his head. It was that exact insistence on attracting all the monsters' attention that had gotten Dudley cursed that first time they went hunting undead. "Fine, fine. Have it your way. Now if you're done picking through what scraps they left behind, we need to—"

Harry's words were cut off when a high-pitched scream came from down the hall. That was no zombie's cry. It was far, far too human.

* * *

 **This chapter was supposed to be longer, but I didn't exactly have the zombies' first appearance planned out until I started actually writing it, so it took longer to get to this point than I really wanted.**

 **But hey, shorter chapters mean a faster turnaround. Hopefully.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	4. Deeper into the Dungeon

**Faraway-R:** You won't need an interlude to find out how the wizards are doing. They play an integral part in the main plot. We just need to get to it.

* * *

 _Harry's words were cut off when a high-pitched scream came from down the hall. That was no zombie's cry. It was far, far too human._

* * *

 **Chapter 4  
** **Deeper into the Dungeon**

The scream was abruptly cut off, and even though it was impossible to hear such a thing at this distance, Harry had no trouble imagining the gurgle that undoubtedly accompanied it. It was loud, close, which ruled out it coming from someone on the floor above them or below. It had to be on this same floor, and his mind flashed back to the open door he had seen when they were climbing the stairs. Another group, then, one that had found themselves in serious trouble.

Dudley gripped his axe in two hands and started moving towards the scream, his steps heavy but getting faster as he shifted his bulk into a run. He was built for strength, not speed; the latter was Harry's area of competence. "C'mon, Harry! We've got to get over there!"

"Are you really just charging in… And you're gone." Harry pinched the bridge of his nose before sprinting down the hall after his cousin. "Crystals' light, Dud, your heroics are going to get us killed one of these days."

There were two problems with running wildly through an old haunted house like this. First, all the dead things trying to kill them would wake up and chase after them. Second, they had no idea where they were going, which raised the likelihood they would run into a dead end and then be trapped with all those monsters. There was no way this was going to end well.

Sure enough, zombies were crawling out of the walls and falling from the ceiling; Dudley might be swinging his axe around and smacking them away, but the Knight was still pushing forward more than anything else. As soon as they were out of the way and were not grabbing onto his armor, he ignored them. Already a crowd of injured zombies were forming at his back, ready to pounce as soon as he stopped moving.

Downwards arc with a flair on one end, a squiggle in the middle to make a crude approximation of a flame. "Flareblade," Harry whispered, and fire swirled up the length of his rapier.

A zombie at the very rear of the pack turned around at the sound of footsteps and got two swift stabs into its eye sockets for the trouble. Those strikes, on top of the damage Dudley had already done, was enough. The body collapsed into ash and embers, and the tip of Harry's blade sunk into the back of the skull of the next. The good part – the _only_ good part – about Dudley's charge was that he had drawn out every undead in his path, and with how they were bunched up they got in each others way when a few did turn Harry's way. Between his flaming sword and a few Cure spells fired into the crowd, it was not hard work putting down the monsters Dudley had wounded on his path. It was just slow, and more than once Harry had to hop backwards to keep some space between a particularly quick member of the horde. All the while, his cousin was still racing ahead.

Dudley had better not get himself too deep into the mob, or Harry was going to find a way to resurrect him just to kill him again himself.

Something moved behind a couple of zombies, and an axe came back around to split their heads open. "Get a move on, Harry. We're in a hurry."

"Don't you give me that, you son of a—"

Dudley was moving again, and Harry swallowed his diatribe to follow. It quickly became clear why Dudley had turned back, and it was not pure familial fondness. A second crowd of undead was visible up ahead, smaller than the one Dudley had roused but still large, and this one was not just zombies. Instead, the hazy silhouettes of ghosts floated around and through the bodies of the zombies, which themselves were bent over the ground. The dripping chunks of matter they pulled into view was all the proof Harry needed that they were busy eating.

"They're probably all dead by now, and there's not a damn thing we can do to help them, you know," he said, rolling his head and shoulders in small circles to loosen them up. "I'll handle the ghosts and you deal with the zombies?"

"Sounds like a plan. Go!"

The warcry Dudley let out as he charged into the fray certainly caught their attention. "Stomp!" His axe glowed blue as he poured his power into it, and when it hit the nearest zombie in the chest, the body was flung backwards with an impossible amount of force and coated everything in a cone in its remains. The zombies screamed and hissed and leapt at the eager Knight.

Harry, meanwhile, picked out his targets. Ghosts sucked, there was no two ways about it. They were almost totally incorporeal, which meant that although they could theoretically be hurt with weapons, it was never going to kill them in any reasonable amount of time. Worse, they did not attack with teeth and fingernails like their physical cousins. They threw out magic, in particular poison spells and the same curse that Dudley had fallen prey to before. They were also weak to magic, fire specifically, though in the way of all undead they too could be re-killed with healing magic.

And Cure was cheaper on his magic reserves than Flare.

He kept an eye on Dudley and fired a couple of spells his way, but by and large his attention was on spraying the ghosts with green sparks that ate away at them like rain falling on the dirt and dodging out of the way of the roiling orbs of darkness they flung his way. It did not take long before the ghosts had been exorcised, and yet even so he did not rush to Dudley's side. His cousin was handling himself just fine, and right now there was a burning in his chest and arms that had nothing to do with physical exertion. He was close to his limit in terms of how much magic he could cast without a good rest or else expensive items he would prefer not to use if at all necessary.

A swing of the axe, and the last zombie was split in twain. Harry pushed himself away from the wall and walked towards Dudley and the carnage before them.

It had been a decent party, six people that he could see. They had taken a wrong turn, or else they had made the rookie mistake of trying to run away from the undead down an unexplored route and found themselves in this hallway without an exit. Or, he realized when his eyes landed on ancient-looking jewelry sitting in the dust, they had the misfortune of running into a wight, a far more intelligent species of undead that was never without its retinue. They probably focused on killing it, which was a smart idea, but in the process they left themselves open to all the ghouls it had brought along for the fight. Between the sheer numbers, the ghosts throwing around foul magics, and the wounds they sustained fighting the wight, they could not drive off their enemies.

"I recognize her," Dudley said, pointing at a blonde woman in a blood-soaked robe. "She's one of the Clerics I wanted to try recruiting. I guess she got snapped up by this bunch first."

And now she lay cold and still, chunks of her flesh ripped out and gnawed on. He looked over the bodies, part of him saddened by their senseless deaths while a colder, calmer piece picked out what he and Dudley could use or sell. It would undoubtedly shock and abhor the common folk that he would come across a scene like this and think only of what would benefit them, but at the end of the day he and Dudley and everyone in this party were Adventurers. They knew what they were getting into, and rare was the Adventurer who would begrudge others taking what they needed when he was dead and gone.

A faint motion grabbed Harry's attention, and he reached for his blade. A zombie, a ghost they had not finished off?

The chest of one of the bodies rose and fell ever so slightly.

"Dud! I think this one's still alive!" He jumped over an armored corpse and slipped on a patch of blood, though he managed to turn the fall into a slide on his knees to the fallen woman's side. Shaking her shoulder did nothing, though whether it was because she was too injured to respond or because of something else, he had no way to know. Grasping at the few last drops of mana that still lingered in his body, he shoved a Cure spell into her. Her color improved the faintest of degrees from the corpse-like pallor she possessed, but he knew it would not be enough. He had a good idea what the ghosts had done to her, after all, and simple healing would do little to help when she still had their noxious poison flowing through her veins.

He opened his pouch and dug through the pockets stuffed into its impressive depths. He and Dudley had one panacea between them, but this girl needed it more than they did right now.

"Good grief, these guys came prepared," he heard from beside him, and he glanced over to find Dudley rooting through the pouch of one of the fallen Adventurers. His cousin pulled an arm out to reveal a spherical bottle, the fluid within somehow clearer and purer than the freshest spring water. "Catch."

The bottle of holy water fell into his hands, and he uncorked it and forced the woman's mouth open. Curse was among the worst of all status magics because there was no way for the person afflicted with it to do anything to help themselves. From the way Dudley described his experience, while under its effects he had been unable to make any decisions, even to walk or defend himself. Instead he had been beset by crushing self-doubt at every option available to him. It had been, to hear him tell it, the worst experience of his life. If this woman was to do anything to help them help her, the curse was the first thing that needed to go.

With the woman unable even to swallow of her own volition, he did the next best thing. He poured the holy water into her mouth, then shut it and pinched her nose. The fact that people could still breathe while cursed was proof that it did not take away all movement, and that meant the simple subconscious things people did to keep themselves alive were still in full force. Sure enough, the woman swallowed, and between one second and the next she went from lifelessly still to swinging her fists at him.

"Hey hey hey! Stop!" On the plus side, clearly she had some fire in her. It might be the only reason she was still alive. "We're trying to help you!" He reached back into his bag and pulled out a vial of antidote. "Swallow this next. I gave you a little bit of a boost, but we need to get rid of the poison, or that's what's going to kill you."

Her eyes were coal black and blinded when she turned them to him, but she still opened her mouth and let him pour the horrid concoction in her mouth. As a reward for her cooperation, he pulled out a leaf of sightgrass while she was coughing on the medicine and rubbed it between his hands to squeeze out the sap that he then applied to her eyelids. A few blinks, and the darkness cleared away to reveal a much more natural brown. She looked up at him and moved her mouth without words coming out.

With a sigh, he gave her a bundle of herbs to chew on that would rid her of the muteness. "Those ghosts really did a number on you, didn't they?"

"You have no idea," she replied in a hoarse voice. "Where's Mikaela and Geoff? My teammates. They should be nearby."

Oh, they were nearby, all right. It was probably them that was soaking into her clothes. She looked up and down his face, and any hope within her died. "Oh."

"Yeah." This time he pulled out a pair of health tonics, which would heal her as effectively as magic could. "Drink these, then we should get you out of here. It… might be best if you shut your eyes."

She shook her head. "This isn't the first time I've seen the aftermath of a zombie attack."

But it was probably the first time she had ever seen it done to her teammates, he wanted to say. If she wanted to get back on her feet that badly, though, that was her decision at the end of the day. He offered her a hand, and she pulled herself up. That motion put the bodies directly in front of her vision. "Oh, no. No, no, no," she whispered. Tears started streaming down her face.

She was actually taking this extremely well. It was probably the shock.

He turned to look at Dudley, who winced but shrugged. They could not leave this woman here, not when she had just watched her party be murdered. Should they escort her out of the manor, however, they were basically giving up whatever chance they had of finding artifacts and the Earth wands with only a single portrait and a few zombie bones to show for it. The woman pulled her hair back, revealing a pair of feline ears on top of her head, and the lost expression on her face made the decision for them. "Let's get your team's stuff, and we'll lead you back outside—"

"No!" She whirled on him with a savage anger. "We came here for a reason, and I'm not walking out all but empty-handed. That would be throwing their lives away for _nothing_! I'm staying here, and if you want to try to shove me out, I'll make you regret the day you were born."

Harry took a couple of steps backwards, holding up his hands in front of him in surrender, and Dudley chimed in, "Okay. No problem. Just offering. You're down a group, though, so why don't you tag along with us for a while until we all get out of here. Anything we find, we'll split three ways, and you keep everything you and your party found before all this." Her seething settled down as Dudley's words washed over her. "Sound good?"

"That's fine. I can work with it." She looked down at the bodies again, and the last traces of her scowl faded away. She glanced back up at Dudley before turning to Harry. "…Thanks."

She took a few steps away from where they found her and bent down to pick up a bow taller than she was, then she tapped the end of the leather quiver on her back. A dozen arrows appeared, red smears of blood fading off the fletching even as Harry watched. A Hunter, then. Another hybrid class like Harry's Fencer, Hunters were archers who could imbue their arrows with debilitating magics like poison and blindness. Even without that, they could still shoot from a respectable distance, which allowed them to hold their own in a fight. The fact that she was struck down with status magic must have added insult to injury.

"Haven't really introduced ourselves, have we?" Dudley said, breaking the silence with all the grace of a bull in an apothecary. "I'm Dudley, and that's my cousin Harry."

The woman turned back towards them. "Hermione."

"Great. Now that we're all introduced, let's get a move on," Harry said.

Dudley shook his head. "Not so fast. Don't think I didn't notice you giving her health tonics. You're all out of mana, aren't you?" Harry sighed when his cousin started digging in his bag. "We're not leaving until you've taken a couple of spirit herbs."

"We were saving those for a reason"—mostly expense—"and I have a sword. I'll make do…"

He trailed off when a long, narrow vial filled with a bright blue potion entered his field of vision. Hermione was deliberately not looking at him, but she gave the spirit tonic a little shake. "You used up a lot of magic coming over here after Mikaela screamed, I bet. Not everyone would have done that. Consider this thanks for trying to help and… you know… saving my life."

Harry gave her a look up and down before reaching out and taking the tonic for her. Spirit herbs worked okay for restoring mana, and they were hard to find. Tonics made from them were even rarer, but so much more effective. A spirit tonic for a life might seem like a cheap trade, but among Adventurers it was more even than it first looked. Popping the vial open, he tossed back the contents and sighed when strength flowed through his arms again. This should easily carry him through the rest of the manor.

"So where do we go from here?" Dudley asked, breaking the increasingly awkward silence. "I spotted a couple of rooms on our way over, but I don't know how much stuff is actually inside."

Hermione walked to the wall at the end of the corridor and tapped on it a couple of times. "Geoff was knocking on this wall for a minute or so when we came to the end of the hall. He thought it was weird that it would just end like this. That's when the new girl came running up with all the zombies chasing after her. I guess she found the wight and decided to use white magic on it, and then came to us when she was so obviously out of her depth. Stupid bint. Anyway, Geoff's instincts were rarely wrong, and we've found hidden treasure by following them before. There's almost certainly something here. I just can't figure out how to open it."

That was a challenge, but did they really need to open it the same way the builders intended? He looked over at Dudley, who looked back with an expression that quickly turned puzzled. "What?"

"Just thinking that we could make our own entrance." He pointed at Dudley's axe. "Think that will work as a skeleton key?"

Dudley opened his mouth as though to argue, but he cut himself off with a sigh. "If this plan breaks my weapon, all your shares of the contracts we get are going to buy me a new one."

"Quit griping and knock down the wall already."

The Knight hefted his axe over his shoulder and ran at the wall. Planting his forward foot, he spun and slammed the blade into the smooth cream wall. For a moment Harry was worried that it would encounter the stone exterior, but first the axe and then Dudley crashed through the flimsy surface and into a hidden room.

"I found something!" Dudley called out.

Harry stepped through the hole his cousin made followed by Hermione, an arrow already nocked on her bow. This room actually looked… almost normal. It was an old-fashioned sitting room of some kind, old-fashioned in that it was lit entirely by a few candles set in sconces high on the walls. Another moving portrait sat above a long-cold fireplace, proving that it also held items of value. That was not to say that it was in perfect condition. A solid third of the carpet on the floor was soaked through thanks to a shattered window that looked out on leafless trees, and at the far end stood a door that had been braced closed with a velvet couch. The torrential storm outside poured in through the window and stirred the raggedy curtains. "Anyone know how it's raining out there when it was a nice day when we came in?" asked Dudley.

"I've heard stories of places like this, but I've never seen one myself," commented Hermione, "and I've been in my fair share of dungeons and monster lairs. Maybe it has to do with all the undead in here?"

Harry gripped his blade tighter. "Who knows? All I can say for sure is that this place gives me the creeps. Spread out and grab what you can, but let's get out of here as soon as we can."

They moved apart, stuffing whatever they could in their pouches. There was a wide assortment of things that might or might not be what the client was looking for, including the portrait and a little broom that floated on its side a couple of inches off the ground, but even things like an elaborately carved chair were fair game. Harry reached a desk on the other side of the room and stuffed the papers strewn about on the surface into his bag, but when he grabbed the handle of the drawer, it refused to budge. Yanking harder, all he managed to do was make it rattle.

"Shouldn't bes touching that."

Harry whirled around with his sword up at the creaky voice. No one had been inside waiting for them when they entered, and they would have noticed anyone coming through the hole or moving the sofa. Yet somehow, in the middle of the room on the edge of a glass table, sat a tiny figure wrapped up in a thin cloak. His first thought was that it was a Kobold, but even they were not so light on their feet that they could manage this.

"Who are you?!" Dudley, ever the soul of tact, demanded.

"Shouldn't bes touching. Missus wouldn't like it. Missus said protect the house. Shouldn't touch nothings." The figure rocked back and forth in its spot, and its already high voice grew more distressed. "Missus not like Master. Missus not hurty. Missus said protect the house. Thieves breaking in. Thieves taking everything. Can't protect the house. Missus would bes upset."

He looked over at Hermione and pointed at her bow and then the person rambling on and on about 'Missus'. He had no clue who this was or what they wanted, but the insane rambling did not give him much in the way of confidence that this would end peacefully. She nodded and drew back her arrow; not to its full distance, but enough that she should be able to loose it in an instant.

He, on the other hand, twisted around to tap the desk with the point of his sword. "What's in here that you don't want us taking?"

This conversation was going to end in tears, but the little fellow was insane enough they might be able to get some useful information out of him first.

"Missus's things. Missus wouldn't like it."

Or maybe he would just keep repeating himself. That was also a possibility.

If he could not get open answers to his questions, maybe he could trick the figure into revealing more. He would just have to take a – admittedly stupid – risk. "Dud, the desk is locked, and I can't find the key. Mind smashing open the drawer?"

"No!" screeched the figure. Harry braced himself to be pounced upon, but the tiny man just rocked faster and faster and reached out his hands to pull the cloak tighter around himself. "Don't touch. Can't touch. Missus… Missus…"

Harry was not listening. His attention was on the other figure's hands. Hands that gleamed white in the candlelight without a speck of flesh upon them.

"Kill it!"

The Hunter released her arrow, but instead of sinking into rotting flesh it bounced off and ricocheted into a wall sconce. The impact was, however, enough to wake the creature up from its ramblings. "Thieves! Thieves in the house! No thieves!"

A rip of fabric filled the air and the table shattered as the figure sudden grew with monstrous speed. Smaller than the average Kobold to as large as a Human to bigger than a hulking Osgul, and still it grew. The room deformed and stretched to grant the gigantic beast space to move without its head slamming into the ceiling, and the hood fell back to reveal a skull with two triangular fins coming from the sides poking out from a ragged robe. It roared its fury, and the high pitch of its voice coming from this massive shape would have been comical were it not for the obvious danger presented to them and the name that was whispered maliciously in Harry's ears, Gaia itself letting him know just how much trouble they had gotten themselves into.

 _Grand Lich_.

"Oh, shite."

Harry could tell that the others had heard the monster's name from their reactions. Dudley immediately used Armor Up to further protect himself and charged, his horizontal swing slamming just below the lich's knee but doing little to stagger it. Hermione jumped out of sight behind the creature, though where she was going he could not tell.

"The hole's gone!" she shouted.

Had she tried to ditch them? He could not say anything because he was busy dodging the hand as large as his chest that tried to slap him out the open window, but that was going to have to be discussed. Just as soon as they were not in danger of dying.

The twenty-foot skeleton screamed and leaned forwards, and from its mouth poured a wave of ghostly emerald flames. Harry pushed himself to sprint as fast as he could and dived, turning his fall into a roll that got him out of the way of the flames as they splashed like liquid on the wooden floor and sodden carpet. "Dudley, get this thing off me!"

"I'm trying!"

Sketching a star, Harry flung a Cure spell at the Grand Lich. It was not the best way to get the gigantic undead to ignore him, but if he was going to be targeted, he might as well get some damage in.

"That's _not helping_ , Harry!"

An arrow flew from out of nowhere and sank into the open ear canal in the skull, which did not seem to do any extra damage but certainly distracted the lich for a second. Rather than turn its attention to her, however, it swiped at him again. "Change of plans!" he shouted, hopping backwards to avoid the sharp tips of the finger bones and tossing his rapier into a corner away from the fighting. There was no way he was about to try stabbing this abomination, and the empty scabbard at his side was leather, lightweight and pliable compared to what it would be like with the sword inside it. "If it wants to dance, I'll dance with it! Go red and kill this thing!"

The inarticulate sound of confusion Dudley let out revealed what he thought of this plan. He did not argue, however; he too could see that there was little chance of distracting the Grand Lich. Harry's comments had earned him its undying enmity. Instead, there was a brilliant flash of ruby light, and when it cleared Dudley looked as though he were glowing that same color even through his armor. The Knight let out a bellow, the sound filled with rage, and started hacking at the nearest part of the lich with greater strength and speed than he had previously possessed.

The green flames had died out, and Harry ducked and rolled through the space before launching another bolt of white magic. "Hermione, can you—" A streak of blue light flew from her corner of the room and sent colored ripples over its cloak. "Yeah, that!"

"Undead are immune to practically all status effects! I'll lower its defenses and strength as much as I can, but I don't know if it'll be enough!"

It would have to be. There was a reason he and Dudley never went after big enemies like this; they were too strong for two people to take down, and obviously even three was still pushing it. There had to be some way to wear it down faster than they were, though. A crazy idea came to him, one that he would normally never consider, but in this case he might be able to use the monster's size against it. "You have to be better than that!" he taunted the undead. "I'm stealing all of the Missus's things!"

The Grand Lich screamed its hate again and bent over. Harry waited until he could see the first hint of the green fire before he rushed towards it and dived between its bony legs under the edge of its cloak. Even with that effort, he still felt the heat licking at his heels as the flaming vomit poured out on top of where he had once stood. Rolling into the pile of scrap wood in the middle of the room that was all that remained of the chairs that once stood there, he spun around to find that his foolhardy plan had worked. The lich wailed in pain this time as the fires sank into its cloak and caught it alight.

He had absolutely no way to know if it would do any damage to the creature, but at the very least it could not hurt. He knew from his early attempts at spellcasting that running into his own spells could injure him, though, so hopefully Gaia would be fair to him right now and let the same apply to this thing.

Red light flickering grabbed his attention, and Dudley staggered backwards as the berserker's strength faded from him. Unfortunately, the light show had been seen by the Grand Lich too, and the massive undead turned and backhanded the Knight. Dudley's feet actually left the ground as he bounced off the floor and rolled bonelessly into the dead fireplace.

"Dud! Cure!" His spell flew the distance, but _now_ the Grand Lich was interested in crushing his cousin. Harry shifted his aim to the monster. "Cure! Hermione, get over to Dudley and get him back on his feet!"

Peppering the overgrown zombie with spell after spell finally did enough harm that it turned back towards Harry. "That's right. Over here, you giant bastard. Come at me," he muttered.

It took several steps towards Harry before screeching again. The Grand Lich raised its clenched hands toward the ceiling, and Harry turned tail and ran out of the way of the blow that he knew would fall. He managed to get away from its reach, but that proved to be less important than he imagined when the floor beneath his feet shuddered, sending him to the ground.

He turned over to find the Grand Lich crawling his way, the empty sockets of its eyes somehow still capable of expressing burning hatred. Clenching his teeth, the threw another Cure spell into the one on the left and almost smiled at the cry of pain it let out. "Don't like that, do you?"

The Grand Lich hissed at him, and once again deathly green welled up in its throat.

 _Thunk_.

The top of the lich's skull slammed down on its lower jaw, and gouts of emerald fire billowed out from the holes of its nose and the corners of its mouth. It grunted once. Arms giving out, the skull fell forwards and hit the floor with bone-rattling force.

Stuck into the back of its head, the arrow that had finally ended its life still quivered gently.

* * *

 **Some of you might have figured out who that boss used to be. If not, just know that was a canon character and I am a** _ **terrible**_ **person.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	5. Escort Mission

**Jack Inqu:** The whole weather thing will be explained later on. For now, I'll just say it has to do with the interaction of Earth-style magic and Gaia.

 **ABZB13:** The Horcruxes will play no role in this story. Nor will Voldemort. :-)

 **Isa Lumitus:** I may have to work on making this clearer, but humans don't change into other races when they become Adventurers. As far as anyone knows, you stay what you're born. I'll try to bring it up later in-story, but each race believes that the Transition brought them from a world where theirs was the only species to Gaia, where there are five races slammed together.

* * *

 **Chapter 5  
** **Escort Mission**

The arrow set in the back of the Grand Lich's skull faded away as it was summoned back into Hermione's quiver, and another moment passed before the bones sagged and started sublimating away. From its corpse fell a few pieces of golden jewelry as it finally disintegrated to nothing. Harry looked over at the Hunter and nodded. "Thanks."

She gave him a small half-smile.

"I'm all right, too, thanks for asking," commented Dudley as he crawled out of the fireplace the Grand Lich had thrown him into. "Not sore at all from the grate or anything."

"You're not dead, either, otherwise you'd be a lot less annoying," Harry shot back. His voice lacked any heat, however, and when Dudley stood up to reveal the soot staining his face he could not hold back his laughter. Dudley, too, started chuckling.

Hermione just shook her head. "Boys."

He picked himself up from the floor and walked over to the corner where he had thrown his sword. The hole in the wall where they entered had sealed itself over during the fight, but now that just mean they did not have to worry about being ambushed by any more undead for a while. "Let's grab what we can while we can, and then we'll unblock the door on our way out. With how strong that thing was, I can't help but think there's a wand in here somewhere."

"Hey, Harry?" He looked over to find Dudley twirling a long, thin rod of pale wood between his fingers. "Think I found it already. It fell off the mantle when I crashed into it."

"Glad to know your fat arse was useful for something for once."

"At least I wasn't the one dancing around trying to keep from getting squished."

"Yes, yes, you're both impressively manly men," Hermione said in a mocking voice as she walked over to the desk. "I'm more interested in what that thing was so interested in us not touching."

"The drawer is still locked, remember—" A sharp tug, and the drawer slid out with little effort. Hermione glanced over at Harry, who looked away and muttered mulishly, "I loosened it."

Rather than throwing out a barb at his expense, Hermione apparently decided to take a small measure of pity on him. "You two don't fight a lot of dungeon bosses, do you? It isn't uncommon, at least in my experience, for there to be a piece of magic or two that are tied to their lifeforce. Kill the monster, and you break the spell. My question is what was so important that it was locked up with that kind of spell."

Harry walked near to look over her shoulder at the contents of the drawer. More papers, but it was when she pulled them out and set them to the side that another rod rolled into sight. Unlike the one Dudley had found, this one was dark and tooled with silver on both ends of the bulbous handle. "The wand that belonged to 'Missus'?" he guessed.

"Most likely."

"On the plus side, it makes splitting up the treasure easier," Dudley said as he sucked up the painting into the pouch on his belt. "Harry and I keep the wand I found, and you get that one. We all come out ahead. Now let's pick up everything in here and head back to the client before we get attacked by anything else running around."

The velvet couch blocking the doorway leading out was more easily removed than Harry expected, mostly due to Hermione transferring it into her own pouch, and the door itself opened without resistance. Harry could not help looking at the scratches on the front of the door. "I guess that lich really didn't want anybody getting in."

"The door was probably locked with the same magic the drawer was," Hermione said. "Going through the wall was probably the easiest route into the room."

"Or out," Dudley grunted from behind them. "Don't think we didn't see you try to run and leave us in there with that thing by ourselves."

The Stellis Hunter spun around and jabbed a finger into Dudley's breastplate. "I. Did. _Not_. I checked on the hole you made to see if _all_ of us could get out of there. I'm not the kind of person who would run away and leave allies, even temporary ones, to fight to their deaths."

Harry and Dudley exchanged looks before the latter spoke again. "Glad to hear it. It just didn't look that way from our side."

Hermione huffed and turned away to continue down the stairs to the ground floor.

Opening the doors revealed that somehow the hour or so they had spent in the manor had been long enough for the sun to move from its zenith when they entered to its new position at the horizon. "There's no way we were in there that long," Harry muttered.

"No, but it matches what little I've heard about dungeons like this." He looked over at their current companion. "Again, I've never been inside one before. All I know is that they are termed 'Underhills'. Time is supposed to move differently inside than outside. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster, and how fast or how slow is unpredictable. No one really knows anything more than that."

"As long as the guy's still here to pay us, I don't really care," said Dudley.

The client was indeed still present, sitting in the back of his cart among his piles of silver and gold. "Did you bring anything worth my while?" he asked, pushing his floppy hat out of his face. "The last few people hadn't found anything of value…"

His commentary trailed off when they pulled out the two wands they had found. Harry's satisfaction at rendering the blond man speechless faded when he realized the client was not looking at both wands. His attention was solely on the wand in Hermione's hands. The client actually reached out as though to take it from her when she pulled away and cleared her throat. "Our payment?" she reminded him.

That shook him out of his state of wonder. "Yes, yes, of course," he said instead. Pulling two boxes of coin closer, he demanded in the same pompous voice he had used when he first introduced himself, "Show me what else you found."

Perhaps he was feeling generous after having two wands shown to him, or perhaps they had been lucky, but the client seemed willing to purchase just about everything they had collected from inside the house. He did not truly inspect anything, either; at most he would run his hand over something or other before ordering his bodyguards to move it into the back of the cart.

"How do you know what you're looking for?" Harry asked, scratching his head in confusion. The paintings were obviously unusual, but the sofa and curtains and other things they had found? Not so much.

"Experience and a good eye," the client said, but then the blond man did a double take and started at Harry's forehead. "Where did you get that scar?" he asked after a long moment.

His scar? Harry fingered the jagged line that ran from his hairline down almost to his right eyebrow. "This? I got it when I was little. Before the Transition." It was a relic of the accident that had killed his parents, but nothing that a random stranger would be interested in.

"I see," whispered the client almost as though to himself. "I don't think I got your names before."

Dudley put a hand on Harry's shoulder and pulled him back a step. "I'm Dudley Dursley, his name is Harry Potter, and this is Hermione…"

"Hermione of the Riverland Grange," she threw in.

That was interesting, Harry thought to himself. The Granges were large plots of farmland scattered here and there across the face of Gaia, where fertile fields were readily available without the need to clear out thick forests teeming with beasts and monsters. The residents also had a reputation for being either poor farmhands or arrogant, self-centered, and self-titled lords and ladies. Somehow, he could not see someone from either group leaving to make a living as an Adventurer.

"Who are you?" he asked instead of the other man.

"No one important. Just a collector of the uncommon and unusual." The client counted out several bags of coins and handed them as well as the two boxes over. "Have a pleasant evening."

Once they had walked out of earshot, Dudley finally voiced what they were all thinking. "That wasn't creepy at all."

"If he wants to be creepy, that's his business. It's not like we're ever going to see him again," Harry pointed out. "I'm more worried about getting back to Glasgow. That wasn't an easy road in the daylight, and now it's turning dark."

A moment passed before Hermione cleared her throat. "You don't need to head out tonight. My party rented a couple of rooms in an old converted barn that is the closest thing there is to an inn back in the village. You could stay there tonight. The rooms are already paid for, and it isn't like there's anyone else who is going to use them tonight."

"You're sure?" Harry asked. Sooner or later, the shock of seeing her party slaughtered in front of her was going to catch up with her, and she might not feel quite so generous as did right now.

"They would go to waste otherwise. I know I'm ready to fall asleep already, and you probably need to rest and replenish your mana after all the magic you were throwing around fighting the lich. A spirit tonic isn't the same as a good night's sleep."

That was the kind of argument he could not fight against, and he looked over to Dudley with a shrug. It looked like they were staying in Scunth tonight.

* * *

 _Knock, knock, knock_.

Harry glanced up at the door and then looked out the window to see the first light of dawn just beginning to crest over the horizon. Who in the world would knock on their door at the crack of dawn? No one with any sense should be up at this hour. Harry himself was only awake because he had been unable to get back to sleep a couple of hours earlier and decided to while away the time waiting for Dudley to awaken by sharpening their weapons and checking on their gear.

Another knock on the door, and then he heard a hesitant voice call out, "Dudley? Harry? Are either of you awake?"

That answered his question before he could worry that someone was about to barge in and murder them in their sleep. Although, that could still be the case. He strongly doubted it, but anything was possible. Lifting his rapier, he walked the dozen steps to the door and cracked it open to reveal a Stellis's eye staring back at him. "Yes?"

"Can I come in? I need to talk to you."

Shrugging to himself, he pulled the door open all the way to allow Hermione to enter. There was, just as he suspected, no one else with her, and he shook his head and shoved the paranoia that had accompanied his awakening back onto its mental shelf. He blamed the fight against all the undead for putting him in this frame of mind.

One of the two chairs in the room was already filled with gear he had been inspecting, so he gestured for Hermione to take the chair he had just vacated and settled himself on the edge of his bed. "Dud's still asleep, as you can see. What did you want to talk about?"

The Hunter did not immediately answer, instead glancing at the armor and weapons and then her hands for a moment. When she did finally look up, however, the hesitation that had been present in her voice was swept aside. "I need your help."

"I gathered that much. What I want to know is how and why."

"I have a… let's call it a time-sensitive job that I need to finish. There is a small town about three days ride south of here; the town itself isn't important, but its location is. It is next to one of the few mines where foslyrite can be found—"

"And that is what exactly?" Harry asked. He was no expert in gems or minerals admittedly, but he had never heard of whatever she was talking about.

"Foslyrite is a rare mineral with various magical properties. It was discovered a couple of years after the Transition, mostly because one of its main properties is that it will enhance the effects of spellcasting. What matters to me is that it can also be used in a small number of alchemical compounds, in this case one called Sandalphon's Sigh, which…" Hermione trailed off and cleared her throat. "Anyway, this is actually the reason my group and I were part of the job we just finished. We needed the money to help buy the mineral. None of us expected it would be enough on its own, however, so we planned on offering our services to the people of the town to make up the difference. Now that I'm by myself, trying to complete those jobs will be far more difficult. I hoped you and Dudley might be willing to help me with them so I can purchase the foslyrite. I don't know exactly what I could offer you in compensation yet, but I'm sure we could come to some kind of an agreement."

"Depends." The voice that answered was fully awake, not clouded by sleep, and Harry turned to find Dudley still lying in bed with his eyes closed. "What does Sandalphon's Sigh do? We aren't about to agree to anything without knowing exactly what we're getting into."

Hermione appeared reluctant to reveal that information, and Harry beat her to it with his own question. "How long have you been awake?"

"Since you got up. You were pacing around like you always do when you need to occupy your hands to get your mind off something, so I didn't say anything and let you look over our stuff. That normally works to calm you down."

Harry could not help but wonder just how many times Dudley had pulled this 'still asleep' ploy on him, and while he pondered it Dudley sat up and looked expectantly at Hermione.

"Sandalphon's Sigh is a medicine," the cat-girl finally admitted. "Probably the most powerful medicine in the world. It's said that anyone who drinks it, if they die within the day, will rise as hale and hearty as they ever were. Only once after drinking it, and it has so many rare ingredients that it's all but impossible to create even if you can find an alchemist skilled enough to make it in the first place. We – Geoff, Mikaela, a couple of others – have been hunting down the ingredients for the last several months. Foslyrite is the only one we're still missing." She hung her head. "Geoff's little sister is sick. The doctors think it is cancer of some kind, but without medicines from our old worlds, there's nothing they can do about it. We hoped that if we could get all the ingredients to an alchemist we know who _can_ make it, we could give it to her and have her be healed."

That was a far better reason and a more complete explanation than Harry expected. Noble, really. His cousin was looking at him now, but even without asking Harry knew what Dudley's answer would be. It was the same one he had reached. "Okay."

"Okay?" Hermione asked, caution warring with relief on her face.

"Yeah. We made more money on this job than we were honestly expecting, and we don't have anything else that is exactly pressing. We'll help you out."

She smiled and dabbed at one of her eyes. "Thank you."

The sun had fully risen above the horizon when the three of them walked out of the barn where they had slept. Harry and Dudley led their mustids by the reins, the overgrown weasels already loaded with the supplies they had brought with them. Hermione, on the other hand, had a pack over her shoulder that was filled, but she was bereft of an animal upon which to throw it.

Come to think of it, Harry had not seen another mustid in the farm when they arrived the previous night, either. "Need a ride?" he asked. They would have to shift some of the gear to accommodate Hermione's, but it should be doable.

"No. I'm fine."

Before he could ask what she meant, Hermione shook out her left hand and muttered something too low for him to make out. A light breeze swirled around her for a moment before collecting into a swirling ball of gale-force winds. Harry had to cover his eyes to block out the dirt her spell was kicking up. The winds finally died down, and he looked under his hand and stared.

Mustids were the only truly useful rideable creatures on Gaia, but someone must have forgotten to tell Hermione that. What stood before them was without a doubt also the strangest beast he had ever laid eyes on. Its rear half was the more normal of the two, looking like a gigantic cat. On the other hand, it had a head like an eagle or a hawk, and steely feathers covered its body and taloned forelegs before smoothly transitioning into the grey fur on its hindquarters.

Hermione threw her saddle and saddlebags over the thing's back and tied them down. "It's called a griffon," she said in response to Harry and Dudley's dumbstruck expressions.

"Where did you find it? And how did you call it here like that?" asked Dudley.

"Nowhere important." Hermione hopped up into the saddle and gave the griffon a kick to get it moving. It became clear she had no intention of elaborating on her non-answer when she called back, "Let's get going. We're burning daylight!"

Harry shrugged his shoulders and urged his mustid to follow. Now they had a second reason to follow along and help the Hunter out: getting an actual explanation.

* * *

 **God, this chapter and the next one took so** _ **looooooooooong**_ **. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time writing this story right now.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	6. The Mine

**Chapter 6  
** **The Mine**

Harry pulled the stiff brush through the thick coat of his mustid as he cleaned away the mud and twigs that somehow always got caught despite the fact they were following a dirt road to the mining town Hermione was guiding them towards. He had already set up three tents for the night, and once Dudley came back with water and Hermione with wood he would use a touch of magic to start the fires they needed so Dudley could make dinner. This was the last night they had before they arrived at the town, and their catgirl companion had estimated they they should reach it late in the morning if they rode at a good clip.

A frown crossed his face at that thought. Hermione planned to get back into fights with who knew what monsters only days after watching her party get wiped out. She had done okay – more than okay, really – on the way here, but that was nothing more than pulling out her bow and sending arrow after arrow into whatever monster popped its head out long before it was close enough to sink its claws in them. It was wildly different than getting into another fight for their lives. The fact that she was holding together so well actually worried him more than the alternative. People who tended to bottle up their emotions inevitably let them out at the worst possible moment.

He knew that from personal experience, and it was something he was still working on.

His plan took a few minutes to come together, and by then both Dudley and Hermione were back from their allotted tasks. A quick casting of Flare got a small fire going so Dudley could start cooking, and he gestured for Hermione to come with him as he went to the second cone of logs they had built and started a larger fire that should last through the night. "How are you doing?" he asked, deciding to go with the direct approach rather than any kind of subterfuge. Deception and guile were not his strong suits.

"With what?" she asked. From her expression, she seemed legitimately confused, as though she could not think of any reason he was asking this question.

"Just… everything that happened in that mansion," he said weakly, not wanting to appear too blunt. "Losing your party. I know you don't know either of us very well, but if you ever need a friendly ear—"

It was not tears but a sad chuckle that cut him off. "I appreciate you trying to look out for me," she replied, "truly I do, but you don't need to handle me like a vial that will shatter if you so much as look at it wrong. I'm sad that Geoff and Mikaela are dead, but that's more or less it."

"They were your _teammates_ ," Harry reminded her incredulously. If Dudley were killed, he would not be doing nearly as well. Doubly so because Dudley was, to be frank, the only member of his 'family' he could stand.

Hermione shook her head. "Not in the way you're thinking. We weren't a permanent party. We all grew up in the Grange, but no one would describe us as friends. I'm a freelancer more than anything else. They asked me to help them find everything for Geoff's sister, and I was willing to lend a hand, but it was a temporary arrangement for the sake of a little girl. That's it."

Harry's brows rose almost of their own accord. It sounded to him as though she were still going to a substantial length to help this girl if she were really as unattached as she as portraying herself. "Didn't you say you knew about that guy's talent for finding hidden rooms and treasure? That doesn't sound to me like something he would tell every single casual acquaintance or one-time ally."

"I helped them out on other occasions," she said, her tone dismissive. "This may have been the… fourth or fifth job I've worked with them on over the course of nearly three years? It was also the only one I've ever done with them where I didn't charge them a percentage of the reward from the job. Like I said, we were acquaintances, nothing more."

"So you mostly work alone, or do you tag along with other groups more often than not?" The way she shrugged and looked away as though in embarrassment answered his question for him. "Why? You certainly don't seem to lack for options. Just from what little I've seen, just about any group would be happy to keep you on."

Hermione was quiet for several seconds, staring into the fire as though it will give her another answer than the truth. Finally she admitted, "I haven't found a group I like yet."

"How come?"

"Because it's hard to find anyone who is truly openminded nowadays." She took a thin stick that had fallen to the side when they were building the fire and poked the newborn coals in the center of the flames. "Humans tend not to treat Stellis as equals, at least not in my experience. No offense to you or Dudley, but other groups who hired me were less than subtle in their opinions that I was not the same as them, and 'different' often goes hand in hand with 'inferior'. It's a large part of the reason why I always ask for my share of the reward upfront; I've been cheated out of pay before. Not that such an opinion is isolated to humans. Osgul, Eddek, Kobolds; they all think their own race is inherently better than the others, even though the Transition threw us all into this world together at the same time, and we're all trying to figure everything out." She scoffed gently. "We are no more innocent in this than anyone else, of course. There's many a Stellis who thinks themselves the greatest race to ever walk the face of Gaia and that all others are beneath them. I just want to find a group that is composed of decent individuals who don't make assumptions based on someone else's race, that's all.

"As for Geoff's group, they weren't terrible people. I just didn't want to stick with them because we share a common history. I became an Adventurer so I could get out of Riverland. I'm not eager to join up with people who still consider it home."

She stood and brushed off the seat of her pants. "Maybe I'll find a party I like one of these days. I can't rule it out. But until then, I quite enjoy being the master of my own fate."

* * *

The sun was reaching its highest point in the sky when they crested the the top of a hill and caught sight of a low wooden palisade surrounding a town built around yet another hill. "Here we are," Hermione said, leaning forward on her griffon and looking out at the rooftops visible over the pointed ends of the wall. "It's not as impressive as Aurum or Goldwater, but it's our best chance of getting the foslyrite."

Harry looked over at her in surprise. Those names were familiar ones, cities many knew of even though few were allowed inside. They were both huge mining towns that were crucial to the founding and growth of the League of Free Cities, the closest thing to a proper nation that had sprung up in the ten years since humanity had appeared here on Gaia. Most towns and villages were still operating as self-sufficient entities. Glasgow, the minor city Harry and Dudley had made their base of operations for the last month, was on the southern border of the League's reach. If she was comparing this little town to those cities, it could only be for one reason. "This town is built around a goldmine?"

"Mm-hmm. You know how mythril is commonly found in pockets alongside veins of silver? Foslyrite has a similar relationship with gold. The League sells foslyrite for an exorbitant price, but this town isn't part of that nation, so we can hopefully negotiate and work for the mineral rather than paying outright."

"You've mentioned that this stuff is expensive. How much are we talking about?" Dudley asked.

That question brought the Hunter to a halt with a grimace. "At League prices? It's six thousand dimma a gram." Harry whistled in stunned appreciation; that kind of money was not easy to come by at all. Hermione, unfortunately, was not done yet. "Brewing Sandalphon's Sigh requires three grams of it."

"Eighteen thousand." Dudley shook his head. "Yep, now I understand why we're all the way out here in the middle of nowhere."

Hermione nudged her mount back into motion, and the trio descended into the valley. The iron-reinforced gate pulled inwards when they got close, and they had their first chance to take a good look at what awaited them. This town – named Gimli according to the sign hanging just past the gate, which got a snort out of Hermione but flew over his and Dudley's heads – was far larger than Scunth and was even noticeably bigger than where they had grown up. There had to be over a thousand people who called this maze of wooden buildings and alleyways home, many of them already milling around. A few looked the Adventurers' way before turning back to whatever they were doing.

A barn-like building and an open pen filled with mustids sat a short distance from the gate. They stopped there first so Harry and Dudley could stable their giant weasels while Hermione sought directions, and then they began the trek to the mayor's office near the center of town. The longer they walked, the more Harry began to think his read on the mood of the residents of Gimli was more than a little off.

"Anyone else feel like there's something wrong with this place?" he finally asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Dudley in turn.

He waved his hand towards some of the people walking past them. "This town is a literal goldmine. It should be rolling in wealth, and we've all seen rich people act like arrogant snobs. I can't say for sure, but I would think that a town full of them would be even worse."

"I can vouch for that," Hermione said with noticeable bitterness. Her childhood in the Riverland Grange had undoubtedly put her in close contact with a number of obscenely wealthy individuals. "But just because a town has money doesn't mean that everybody who lives there shares it equally. Farmhands and miners, for all that they do the vast bulk of the work required to create product, rarely see the profit of their labors."

"I guess you're right, but…" He looked at the townspeople again. The looks they were getting were nothing like those he and Dudley had received from the inhabitants of Scunth; where those glances were merely curious, these had more of a worried edge. "It if was just that they were poor, they would have adjusted over time. They would be used to it and would get by day to day without focusing on it. Look around you. These people are on their guard about everything around them. This isn't poverty. It's fear."

Harry's words ate at his companions as they continued onward, eventually reaching a building slightly larger and more grand than those around it, though not by much. Inside and down a short hall sat a secretary, who bid them sit after Hermione requested a meeting with the mayor. Only after the woman vanished through the door on the other end of the room did Hermione turn back to Harry. "I think you may be right. Something is off."

The secretary popped her head out a moment later. "Ma'am, sirs? Mayor Richardson will see you now."

"Isn't a mayor supposed to have stuff to do all day, not meet with anyone who walks through the door right then and there?" Dudley muttered.

Richardson was an unremarkable middle-aged man, and he was clearly of the old-fashioned breed if his thin suit was any indication. It was easy to tell who had accepted the new reality of the world from those people who, even ten years after the Transition, still longed for what used to be. Harry, Dudley, and Hermione for example – all adventurers, really, Marked or not – were in the first category; they wore sturdy clothes of leather in addition to thick cloth, a set of fabrics that worked well with the hard life of traveling from city to city and fending off whatever beast or monster decided they would make a delicious lunch. Even people who did not seek out hunts dressed like this because no one could ever predict when a fanged wolf would pop out from behind a bush, and inside cities there was still hard work that had to be done.

People like Richardson, people like Dudley's parents, refused to give up their memories of Earth. Instead of changing their lives to match the different demands on Gaia, they insisted on pretending that everything was as it once was, no matter how silly and foolish it made them look.

"Good morning, Mayor Richardson," Hermione said, taking charge once again. "I am Hermione of the Riverland Grange, and these are my colleagues, Dudley Dursley and Harry Potter. I was hoping we could discuss making a purchase of foslyrite."

The mayor's expression had not been been what Harry would have called enthusiastic when they walked in, and at her words it simply fell further. "I am afraid I will have to disappoint you, then. I can't sell you any foslyrite."

"I realize that it is expensive. That is what I wanted to discuss—"

Richardson shook his head and cut Hermione off with a raised hand. "That is not what I mean. It isn't that I don't want to come to some arrangement. It's that we don't have any of that mineral to sell in the first place."

"How is that possible?" she demanded. "I spoke with several people whom I trust to give me good information, and they all agreed that you have an active gold mine and were producing foslyrite. You sold a large shipment to the Alba cooperative just a couple of months ago."

"We _had_ an active gold mine. Had." Richardson leaned back in his chair and held out his arms in a helpless manner. "Four weeks back, monsters started coming out of the mine shaft. We don't know what they are or how they got there. They killed a dozen people before we were able to close off the mine and kill them. We hired people to deal with them, but nobody who went into the mine ever came back out. The shipment to Alba was the last of the foslyrite we accumulated before we had to shut the mines down."

"What kind of monsters are we talking about?" Harry asked. If the mountain were somehow sprouting behemoths and underdrakes, he could understand how whole parties of adventurers could be lost. If it was just some dire rats, on the other hand, they must have hired a bunch of novices who did not know one end of their swords from the other.

"I don't know what they were. They were big, had teeth and claws."

Well, that was less than useless. Just about everything dangerous could be described like that.

Hermione frowned, but then a faint smile lit up her face. "Perhaps we can make a deal."

"Some other adventurers said they wanted to make a deal, too," Richardson said immediately, "and they took the coins and ran."

"It's a good thing we aren't after money at all, then. We'll go in, kill the monster, and plug up whatever hole they're coming out of. In return, the first three grams of foslyrite you find belongs to us. Simple as that."

Richardson moved to say something, but then he hesitated. "Worst case scenario, you never come back just like the others. We wouldn't be any worse off than we already are," he finally mused out loud.

"Best case scenario, you get your mine back, and everything goes back to normal. Not a bad investment, if I do say so myself." Hermione held out her hand. "Do we have a deal?"

* * *

The barrier that had been erected in the mouth of the mine looked exceedingly similar to the gate they had come through when they entered the town, and it took four men to pull it open. Dudley looked into the tunnel as far as he could and rolled his neck on his shoulders. "We sure these lamps are going to last long enough for us to get in and out?" he asked, patting the lantern hanging from his belt.

"I asked around to get more information from the miners," Hermione replied. "They said there should still be torches and barrels of oil in various stashes throughout the mine. We can refill our lanterns there and light the torches as we come to them."

"Assuming we don't get eaten in the meantime," Harry pointed out. "Dudley, take point. Anything that comes your way, you hack into pieces. Hermione, if you're in the middle, you can fire at anything ahead of us without getting into claw and fang range."

Her mouth twisted into some indeterminate expression, almost like she was trying to force a smile through a scowl or vice versa. "So you're taking the safest position in the rear?"

"No. I'm taking the rear because of the two of us, I'm the one with a sword, so I can hold back anything that tries to sneak up on us." Her teeth clicked together, and she gave him a nod. It was clear she had not worked with Fencers very often before running into him and Dudley. Harry might prefer casting magic, but he was not unskilled with his rapier.

"Let's get a move on, then," Dudley suggested as he started walking down into the mineshaft.

The men behind them shut the door after they were only a short distance inside, which was not a surprise. They had been warned that the people of Gimli were not willing to keep the entrance to the mine open when the monsters within had already proven willing to run out and kill indiscriminately. It did make the mine that much more eerie, though.

The pathway leading deeper into the hill twisted and turned, and here and there were short dead-end tunnels were the miners had clearly followed a vein of gold as it branched off the main route. Hermione raised her lantern as they found each one, and Dudley peered down the tunnel to look for anything moving within. "Clear," he said as they found yet another.

Even though Dudley was already moving on, Harry hesitated. Something did not feel right. He could not see anything lurking in the tunnel, but still he could not get rid of the sensation that something was watching him with eyes full of hate and hunger.

An arrow zipped by his face close enough that he could almost feel the fletching brushing against his nose, and a roar answered the attack.

He spun to the right to find a sinuous form lurking right at the edge of his lamp's light and batting at the arrow that found its shoulder. "Shite!" he yelled. The monster leapt at him, but his sword was already raised in a guard. He plunged the sharp blade down the monster's throat and flung a hasty handful of fire into its eyes when it kept sliding up the length of the sword.

It shivered and spasmed a couple of times before going still, blood welling up and pouring out from the corners of its mouth. The beast sagged towards the ground, and its top fangs clinked against the steel mere inches from the guard and Harry's hand just beyond.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Dudley demanded.

"One of the monsters that killed the townspeople, I expect." Hermione looked over at Harry while he pulled his sword out of the creature. "If you're going to be in the back, you need to keep your eyes peeled just a little more." She paused and shrugged one shoulder. "It was a good idea, though. It's just bad luck we're dealing with something smart enough to stay out of the light while it hunts us."

"I'm more interested in what it is and if there's an easier way to kill it," Harry told her. This was an odd-looking monster, nothing he had ever seen before. It had the basic shape of a large cat, its fur a drab and dirty brown with moss growing in large patches. What made it so strange was that rather than whiskers, it had two tentacles as long at its body that it had been waving in the air along its sides. Harry reached down to squeeze one only to find it thick and tough like muscle.

"It's… no. That doesn't make any sense." Hermione brushed her hair back from her face and took a step closer. "It's a vine panther."

"Why doesn't it make sense? Do these things roar and run down whatever it wants to eat?" Dudley asked.

When Harry dropped the tentacle, the monster's head shifted to reveal a darker brown something on its neck. He bent down to take a closer look and blinked in surprise. "Hey, guys?"

"No, it's an ambush predator. That isn't what's strange. Vine panthers don't live in caves. They're a jungle monster."

"So how'd it get _here_ of all places?"

"Guys!" Dudley and Hermione looked over at him. "I don't know much about these things, but…" He slid his fingers under the leather wrapped around its neck and lifted it and the animal's head with it. "Do they normally wear collars?"

"A collar? What are you talking— It _is_ a collar." The Stellis adventurer blinked as though she expected the collar to vanish, and when it did not she shook her head. "To answer your question, no. They don't. Not unless they have been tamed or at least captured." She frowned. "That would also explain why they're so far from their normal habitat. Someone brought them here and stationed them as guards."

Dudley glanced back and forth between her and the vine panther. "I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to try catching and training one of these things. They don't look like something that would enjoy learning how to play fetch unless it was somebody's throat they were after."

"Most people wouldn't. Not unless whoever is responsible for this is a Conjurer. Conjurers are best known for summoning small creatures to attack and defend for them," Hermione explained to Harry and Dudley's confused expressions, "but they also have the ability to charm monsters to obey their commands. I've only ever worked with one Conjurer, and he did not use the ability a handful of times to distract monsters we were fighting. It is possible that with repeated castings, a monster could be tamed just like a normal pet."

"And someone decided to leave a dangerous pet here because…?"

Hermione turned to Harry with an almost disbelieving face. "What are we inside right now? A literal _gold mine_. That's what he's after, all the gold. It's a clever plan, really," she said as her expression turned more thoughtful. "He sneaks into the town and enters the mine at night— No, that's not it. He gets into the mine by carving out a second opening out of sight of anyone on the walls. Unleashes his monsters the next morning to drive the miners out and cause them to block their end of the mine off. Then he, any other monsters he has with him, and anyone working for him start mining out the ore and carrying it out through the entrance he made. From there he could ship it anywhere he wants."

"Great. We're fighting more bandits, except these have a bunch of monsters helping them out. That basically it?" Harry summed up.

The cat-woman stopped and nodded after a moment. "More or less."

"Look on the bright side, Harry," Dudley told him as he hefted his axe. "Between them and us, we're the only ones who know what's up. They don't know we're here. Let's surprise them."

* * *

 **Silently Watches out.**


	7. Eidolon

**doraemax:** I already know who the last member of the party will be, and it's someone I generally am not kind to in my fics (which pretty much rules out Tonks and Luna). That's all I'll say on the subject. :)

 **Fast Frank:** Stellis are more or less balanced gender-wise. There is a _slight_ predominance of females, but we're talking no more than a 10% differential in the population (i.e., 55% female and 45% male). Practically unnoticeable.

* * *

 **Chapter 7  
** **Eidolon**

Now that they knew their true enemies were not simple animals but people, the need for stealth had become exponentially more important. Monsters could not make the kind of plans people could. If they were going to stop whoever was doing this – and more importantly, get out of this mine alive and intact – they needed to proceed cautiously.

Dudley moved slowly and as quietly as he could, his axe held in front of him to serve as a shield as much as a weapon. Right behind him followed Hermione, an arrow already strung and pulled halfway back. Now that they knew what to look for, they were not going to take any chances. Anything that was even vaguely similar to a vine panther was going to have an arrow put through it. Harry, meanwhile, was practically walking backwards. After the ambush that very nearly succeeded, he was not about to let anything try sneaking up on them again.

A soft _twang_ came from Hermione's bow, and another vine panther fell out of the crevice where it had been hiding. Wisps of black smoke leaked from its eyes as it turned and twisted, its facial tentacles lashing out in an attempt to figure out where it was now that her magic had blinded it. Three more arrows found their homes in its side before it slumped to the ground.

"Are you going to chop off one of its tentacles, too?" asked Dudley.

Hermione shook her head and called her arrows back to her. "I don't need it. They make excellent bowstrings, and mine is getting to the point that I want to replace it anyway. Now that I have one, though, that's all I need."

"We can loot the monsters when they're all dead, anyway," Harry reminded them. "Burn, _then_ pillage."

His cousin shrugged. "You know, I can't stop wondering why there aren't more. I mean, if this guy can tame monsters, you'd think they would be everywhere, not just a couple here and there. This is almost too easy."

A confused blink, and Harry turned around to stare at the Knight. Had Dudley really just gone there?

"Please don't tempt fate while I'm around," Hermione said with a wince. "That leads to bad things far too often to be simple coincidence. Anyway, I expect the reason is because he probably used most of his pet monsters to drive the miners out and convince the townspeople to seal off the mine, giving him unrestricted access. That or the other parties the mayor mentioned hiring were able to kill off what creatures they did find before they were overwhelmed. Our Conjurer either didn't know his guards were slowly being culled, or he decided replacing them just meant more mouths to feed. There's no way to know except to ask, and I don't plan on sitting down to tea with him."

Around another corner they crept, and an opening just a short distance down the short tunnel spilled out light. The three adventurers glanced at each other before walking closer. As soon as they poked their heads out, they stared at the enormous room, almost an arena, that waited for them. It looked like it was originally a natural cavern, but the people of Gimli had punched through the mountain on their search for riches. Someone had afterwards turned it into a base of some kind if the wooden tables and chairs he could see on the floor of the cavern were any indication, and considering that the townspeople all had homes up above, Harry doubted they were responsible. His coin was on a different party.

The trio abandoned the tunnel and made their way down a set of rough-hewn stairs towards a ledge lower down. These, at least, had probably be set up by the miners; he did not expect thieves would have much interest in erecting the rails that kept them from falling the several dozen feet to the floor. They did not provide much cover either, but fortunately the room was barren, the thieves who had taken control of the mines off somewhere else presumably to rip the mine's bounty out of the walls.

Silent as ghosts they walked, and Hermione grabbed both Harry's and Dudley's arms when they reached the opposite end of the ledge. They were not, in fact, completely alone. One man was still present, walking around a cluster of cooking pots at the far side of the cavern where he had been blocked from sight when they first entered. He made no moves to indicate that he had seen them; instead he seemed completely at ease as he tossed ingredients into the different pots.

"Should we go ahead and attack him, or try to avoid detection?" Harry asked in a whisper.

Their catgirl companion shook her head and drew her bow fully. A faint pinkish aura wrapped around the arrow she had nocked. "If we leave him standing, he'll see us eventually and alert the rest. Mute Shot should keep him from yelling for help until we can knock him out." Closing one eye, she let out a long breath and released the bowstring.

Her arrow left a faint trail behind as it flew straight and true through the air and into the thief's back. It was a solid hit, but that would not be enough to put down even the weakest of Marked adventurers. Harry had started tracing a design while Hermione was talking and incanted, "Heart of flame, scour evil—"

Before he could finish the spell, the man fell to the ground.

He turned to catch Dudley's eye, and then he looked at the Hunter who was staring perplexed at her target. "You sure you didn't put him to sleep by accident or something?"

"I'm sure. I don't even know the spell for Stun Shot in the first place!"

They moved down the path to the floor of the cavern and inched their way over to the thief, their weapons at the ready for when he inevitably jumped up and retaliated. Their caution, however, was for naught. The man was still facedown on the ground, the arrow sticking up in the air like a flag planted in virgin soil. Even more concerning was the large red stain that had spread around where the arrow entered his back.

"An adventurer shouldn't die from just that," Harry said. It was an inane comment, he supposed, but this still should not be possible. He had been gored by a boarbatusk once, and while it severely injured him he had still been able to recover fully with several healing tonics and Cure spells. Any adventurer, even one whose Mark was still fresh and tender, would be able to withstand a single arrow.

Hermione slowly pressed the end of her bow into his side, and when he still did not move she bent down to pull up his sleeves. Both his forearms were bare expanses of skin, with nary a hint of a Mark upon them.

"He… He isn't an adventurer like us. He's just… a regular person." She covered her mouth with her hand while her ears laid flat on her head. "Oh god. I _killed_ him."

"You couldn't have known," Harry immediately told her. It was not escaping his notice that she was reacting worse to this than she had when her previous partners had died and she had narrowly escaped the same fate, but this was not the time for a breakdown. "The better question is why the hell is some nobody here in the first place? If you aren't even willing to fight your way up a Spire to be Marked, what makes you think going out in the wilds and working with a Conjurer thief is a good idea?"

The Stellis shook her head. "Maybe he thought it would be safe work. Maybe the Conjurer had blackmail or something on him. There is no way to know."

"Or maybe he was just an idiot," came Dudley's rebuttal. "Either way, he knew there were risks to doing this. There was always the chance was going to end with him being eaten by monsters or killed by adventurers who were brought in to save this town from what he and his pals were doing to it. You know, adventurers like us. We aren't responsible for his bad decisions or what they did to him."

Harry could not help but smile faintly as he shook his head. Dudley was not what anyone would ever call a grand orator, but from time to time he did know what to say.

The Knight glanced around the cooking area and used the butt of his axe to open a few bags sitting against the wall. "Hey, Hermione?" he asked after leaning closer to one of them. "What's foslyrite supposed to look like?"

Hermione sniffed and rubbed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice had a faint waver but quickly returned to normal. "It is a semimetallic mineral, silver in color with a blue glow. It won't be in large nuggets, however; it rarely gets larger than a grain of rice. Why?"

"Like this?" Sticking the axe handle inside, Dudley tipped the bag over and let several handfuls of glowing sand pour out. Hermione's eyes grew wide, and Dudley reached down to pick up the bag. "I think there's more than three grams—"

The instant his hand touched the bag, an ear-splitting wail filled the air.

"Dudley, what did you just do?!"

"In hindsight, I might have messed up."

The trio readied their weapons, and Harry's mind raced. In a normal situation, he would expect the rest of the thieves to come out with blades drawn, but this was anything but a normal job. Most of the people here in the mine were probably unmarked just like the man they had taken down. Instead, he could not help but imagine waves and waves of monsters under the Conjurer's control coming after them to rend them into pieces. He had no idea how many creatures had been tamed and brought here.

It was almost a relief when the only enemy that came after them was a single man in light robes.

"Great. More brats," the man said, his words drifting over to them in the quiet space. "That idiot mayor hire you to clear us out?"

"What if he did?" Dudley fired back.

"Then we have a problem. You kids have seen too much already. If you want to live, you join up with me."

Harry looked to his left and his right, finding the same refusal in his comrade's eyes as he felt. Hermione stepped behind him and drew her bow while Dudley tightened his grip on his axe.

The Conjurer smiled at them. "I gave you a chance. My conscience is clear."

"Shoot him!" Dudley ordered, sprinting towards the other adventurer.

Hermione loosed her arrow and pulled another one from her quiver so quickly and smoothly that it looked to be one motion, but for all that her strike was fast the Conjurer was faster. A glowing mandala appeared between his hands in front of him, and from it burst a blob of liquid green metal. As soon as the blob made its appearance, her arrow curved towards it as though attracted by a magnet. Two pits formed on the front before taking on an eerie glow, and below them was carved a jagged, lopsided mouth. The slimy monster tipped forward and abruptly lengthened to headbutt Dudley in the chest and drive him backwards.

Another arrow deviated from its course. "It has some kind of aura or something," Hermione snapped, the summon's interference with her aim clearly infuriating her. "I can't get a clean shot in."

"At least it's the only one," Harry said. He had never worked with Conjurers before, so he did not pretend to know just what they were capable of, but one thing he did know was that they could only have one pet out at a time. If he could get close and distract it, Dudley could get around it and go after its summoner—

Another diagram appeared before the Conjurer, this time unleashing a glowing orange glob that sprouted three pairs of stumpy legs before fully forming as a lizard-like blob of magma. It regarded Harry and Hermione with burning eyes before turning its attention to Dudley. With a sound like a cat hacking up a hairball, it spat out liquid fire.

"Dud!" His cousin dodged the attack and circled around the slimy creature, trying his best to keep it between him and the salamander. "How does he have two of those things?"

"I don't know!"

Harry shook his head. "Okay, new plan. Focus on the first one. Try to help Dudley take it down."

"I can use Feeble Shot to make it easier for him to hurt, but that doesn't help us with the other one," Hermione pointed out.

"Winter's chill covers the fields in frost." The incantation created a fog around his sword as ice magic flowed down to the point. "Leave that to me."

He ran at the salamander, cursing his luck in his mind even if he kept from saying it out loud. He really, _really_ hoped that the creature using fire to attack meant it was weak to ice-based attacks. The salamander turned to him and launched another fireball that he had to duck to the side to avoid. It also would have been nice if he had been able to find the Megafrost spell somewhere before now. The spell itself probably would not have helped – not with the blob sucking ranged attacks towards itself – but just as the Megavolt spell he used on his blade before fighting the slaver a few days previously had added a paralytic aspect to his strikes, the higher tier ice magic would have let him slow the salamander down to make it easier to kill.

The screech it made when he stabbed it with his enchanted blade made him smile regardless.

Movement in the corner of his eye caught Harry's attention right after he dodged a gush of flame. The Conjurer was waving his hands through the air, each motion leaving trails of light behind to form yet another design. This one was different from those he used to summon his pets, not just in how he had to weave it into existence unlike the mandalas that appeared but also in the design itself. It gave Harry hope that the Conjurer was not going to summon a _third_ pet, but at the same time he had no idea what their enemy was doing. What he did know was that all signs pointed to it being bad for them.

"Don't count me out just yet," the Conjurer said. The diagram burst into motes of light that swirled together into a glowing facsimile of yet another monster. "Have a taste of what else I can do."

"Bomb!" Harry shouted out in warning.

The creature flapped its wings and looked around like it was wondering whose day it was going to ruin. Bombs had always looked weird to Harry, as though an omen of death had decided to force itself upon something cutesy. Its body was a simple glob with goggly eyes, but from each side sprouted skeletal wings that had flames reaching out in parody of membrane. Those childish eyes settled on him and widened.

"…Ah, hell."

Three lines sketched out as if he planned to draw a snowflake, and he hurled a Frost spell at the monster. The only way to deal with bombs was to kill them quickly, because if they were simply injured, they'd would explode and really put the hurt on their unfortunate victim. This was no normal bomb, however; even with the metal goo monster dragging the shards of ice towards itself, a couple of them passed through where the bomb was as though it were not really there. The bomb came closer to Harry and quivered gently.

Then it blew up.

Harry could not hold back the scream as the wave of fire and force that hit him proved itself to be all too real. The sleeves of his coat were reduced to cinders, and the skin that was revealed was already red with white blotches that were quickly going numb. His right hand still burned even now, the metal of the guard glowing red and trapping his hand inside an oven. He fell to his knees, the motion tearing skin and releasing dribbles of clear fluid from his wounds. He was injured terribly, and still the salamander was preparing to unleash another attack to kill him here and now.

It was a herculean effort to force his left hand to move enough to trace a pentagram. "Holy starlight," he slurred, "wash away all wounds. Megacure."

Streamers of green light swirled around him for a moment as his magic was sucked away, and then his rapier was buried in the salamander's eye. The arm that held the blade was utterly unblemished. Harry's panting and grimace gave way to a furious snarl, both for the injury as well as the loss of mana.

In terms of mana, the most basic spells were actually more efficient than higher tier and "stronger" options. Whenever he had to patch himself and Dudley up, he preferred to find somewhere away from things that could attack them so he could just cast a string of basic Cure spells, along with incantation to squeeze every last drop of health out of each casting. He could conserve mana that way, mana he knew he would need later for fireballs and enchantments on his sword. Megacure healed more in one big burst, but it was at the expense of wasting an energy resource that was incredibly difficult to replenish in the field. Gigacure, which only experienced Clerics could cast, was probably even worse.

"Frost," he called out, touching his blade again to replace the enchantment the bomb's explosion had stripped away. He needed to kill this thing quickly, before the Conjurer could unleash any other spectral beasties. He stabbed the salamander again and again as fast as he could, taking a gout of flame to his left arm rather than pull away and dodge. "Just die you bastard!"

The rapier sank into the salamander's magmatic flesh, and yet another blow of steel and ice was too much for it. Its stumpy legs gave out, and then it began melting away.

Harry turned his eyes to find the Conjurer weaving another spell. "Not this time." His spells would not cross the distance, not with the ooze monster still around, but that did not mean he was helpless. He sprinted towards their enemy as fast as his feet would carry him and stabbed his sword into the Conjurer's hand. The man screamed; his disrupted working tried to coalesce, but the sabertooth cat it became roared once before fading into nothingness.

He was now incredibly glad he had made it here in time. If the ghost cat did the same the bomb did and unleashed its special ability, things would have gotten dire. A sabertooth's bite, if it got lucky, would leave an Adventurer on the brink of death regardless of how much armor they wore.

Mostly to reduce the threat the Conjurer posed and only the tiniest bit to get revenge for the bomb, Harry twisted his sword and swept it to the side rather than pull it back for another stab. The motion instead sliced the Conjurer's hand in half from wrist to fingers. He watched the other man clutch the ruined hand to his chest. "I hope you weren't right-handed," he drawled, "because otherwise you're going to have a hell of a time."

Something splattered to the side, and Dudley cheered in triumph. "Take that, you son of a bitch!"

"That's both your pets gone. I'd be surprised if you can hold anything in that hand anymore, let alone use it to cast spells." Harry rested his rapier on his shoulder. "Just give up before we have to cripple you any further."

People in the Conjurer's position could react in a variety of ways. Most would surrender, knowing that there was no way to win; some would try to escape; a small number would even try to keep fighting, deciding that death in battle was preferable to being sentenced to a work gang down in the fields or mines. Harry was ready for whatever the Conjurer did.

He was not expecting to be laughed at.

"You think you've won?" the Conjurer asked, his damnable smirk back in place. "That this is over?"

Harry waved at the space where the summoned monsters once stood and then at the man's injury. "All signs point to yes."

"Stupid child." Rust-colored light began to shine from his chest at the bottom of his breastbone. It grew into an emblem, a hammer hanging upside down from where two swords crossed. Branching lines the same color as the glow spread from the emblem, first over the rest of his chest and abdomen and then racing down his arms and legs. The Conjurer sneered as the lines crawled up his face. "Just because you beat me doesn't mean I've lost. I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeve."

"Harry, run!" screamed Hermione, true fear filling her voice for the first time since he had met her.

He took a hasty swing at the Conjurer, but he was thrown back the instant his blade made contact. From his new perspective on the ground he could only watch in horror as the Conjurer grew taller. Flesh and clothing morphed into gleaming bronze armor. Both shoulders ballooned out, holes opening up so a dozen additional arms could reach out from within. Thrice the height of a man this thing finally stood, its many arms hanging down past its gangly torso to reach its knees. The cylindrical helmet bent forwards so the three pairs of eyes stacked on top of each other could all stare at Harry with undisguised malice.

 _Hecatoncheir_ , the planet whispered, as if he needed the hint to know he was screwed.

"Harry!"

A familiar ululating war cry filled the air, and Dudley came charging in. "Chew on this! Stomp!" He pulled back his axe, already wreathed in visible power, and swung it at Hecatoncheir's thigh. It promised to be a powerful blow; Harry had seen Dudley's Stomp attack fling monsters away and cleave boulders in two.

The edge of the axe hit the armor and stopped dead.

"Well, shite," Dudley said into the silence that followed the failed blow.

For all that it did no injury, the armored giant still noticed. Hecatoncheir leaned over and slapped Dudley with three of the arms on that side. It held none of the violence of Dudley's strike, but nonetheless it sent the Knight flying. With the pest dealt with, it reached down towards Harry.

"Blind Shot!" A pitch black streak slammed into the giant's head and smeared it with shadow. It roared its fury, the sound echoing in its chest. "What are you bloody waiting for?!" Hermione shouted. "Get up and run, damn it!"

Harry scrambled to his hands and knees and shoved himself forwards so he could get to his feet already running. His shadow slowly appeared before him, and he chanced a glance backwards. Hecatoncheir was surrounded by red light, not rust this time but an angrier hue. It tilted its helmet, and even with its sight removed it still started walking towards Harry.

His feet picked up even more desperate speed as he ran to Dudley. "Didn't you hear her?! Get your fat arse up and move!" he said, grabbing hold of his cousin's outstretched arm and yanking him upright.

"We can't leave this thing down here. It's just as bad as the monsters. We need to kill it."

He could not help but scoff as they followed Hermione, who had wasted no time in fleeing down a tunnel once both boys were out of immediate danger. Unlike in the manor, Harry could not blame her in the slightest. He was honestly just glad one of them appeared to know what was going on. "With the way it's chasing us, I think you'll get the chance anyway. But let's not try that right here!"

The tunnel Hermione ran into was not a regular mining tunnel. It might have been one once upon a time, but the miners had carved rooms coming off of it to use for storage. A faint whistle grabbed their attention, and he looked over to find the catgirl waving for them to join her at the back of one of the larger rooms.

He squeezed between two columns of large clay jars and then behind the stack of wide crates she had chosen for cover. "What the hell is this guy?" he asked. "I'm no expert on Conjurers, but that's insane!"

"That isn't the Conjurer." Hermione's voice was soft, and Harry looked closer. She was legitimately terrified of whatever had just happened. "Not anymore. That's something else. Something a lot worse.

"It's an Eidolon."

Harry turned to Dudley and spotted the same look of confusion he knew was plastered on his own face. "What's an Eidolon?"

She laughed bitterly. "It is a god, a god forged of steel and spirit. They can't be killed. At best you can drive them away."

"Okay…" Dudley said slowly, "so how do we drive it off?"

"I don't know."

"Don't lie to us," Harry warned her, causing her eyes to flick back to him. "You know more about this than you're telling. Everyone deserves to have secrets, but not when they are about how we stay alive." She turned away with hunched shoulders. "You've fought one before, haven't you?"

She stiffened at the obvious guess, which gave him all the answer he needed.

"How'd you beat that one?" Dudley all but demanded.

"We didn't beat it," she said, refusing to look at them. "We got lucky. It's not something that's going to happen again."

Harry was not the person anyone turned to for pep talks, but this time he sighed. "Then we'll just have to make our own luck," he told her, echoing a line he was sure Dudley had uttered at some point or another.

Dudley poked his head around the edge of a crate and immediately pulled it back. "You made us luck, all right. _Bad_ luck."

Something shattered within the room, and Harry and Hermione looked at each other before peeking around their own box. Somehow, impossibly, Hecatoncheir had tracked them through the tunnels and into this room. Its face was still blackened, but that did little to hinder it beyond making it move more slowly. Several of its hands hit the jars and destroyed them, and oil splashed on the ground.

Harry looked down at the lantern still hanging from his waist. The former miners had mentioned a store room, now that he thought about it; they said there would be lamp oil there that could be used to refill the lanterns. "Hermione." The catgirl turned back to him. "If that thing gets to us, we're going to die. No second chances, no getting away. We're done for. That's what you were saying, right?"

"Essentially," she whispered sadly.

"So guaranteed death or just a high chance of death." His left hand traced a symbol, and Hermione's eyes widened in horror. He shot her a lopsided grin that was braver than he really felt. "I'm willing to play those odds."

"Harry, don't you dare—"

"Flare!"

A fireball flew from his hand. It missed Hecatoncheir entirely, which in any other situation would be abysmal aim, but he was not trying to hit the Eidolon itself. The spell landed exactly where he wanted it: the puddle of lamp oil on the ground. A gout of flame appeared, and immediately after that the floor became an inferno.

Again the Eidolon roared, and for all that Harry had no previous experience with Hecatoncheir he could not help but think this time the brassy sound was tinged not with anger but rather pain. They _could_ hurt it. It would just take some work.

"Think you can keep that thing pinned down?" he asked a shocked Hermione. "There is plenty more oil where that came from. Dud, throw some more jugs on that. I'm going to test out how that armor holds up against lightning."

Several jars flew at their enemy, and each one resulted in an explosion. After the third, Harry could see the bronze plates of the metal warping from the heat. An arrow tinged in purple flew past him and into a gap revealed by the melting armor, and it was followed by another and another. "I'll do what I can to get rid of its magical resistance," Hermione told him, "but I don't know if I can get any status conditions to stick. I'm surprised I was able to blind it in the first place, though it might have been because it didn't exactly help us much."

"Just do what you can." His left hand traced a stylized lightning bolt, and a spoken command flung a bolt of lightning. Hecatoncheir screamed again, which only urged Harry on even more. Metal sizzled and sparked; flames reached for the ceiling. The Eidolon tried to push itself back to its feet, and they increased the speed and fury of their attacks. They had to kill it quickly, or it would kill them before they could get away—

Hecatoncheir screamed, and the force of its voice blew away all the flames that surrounded it. Harry was in the middle of tracing another rune when its form began to glow the same deep red as when the Conjurer transformed into this monstrosity. Glowing armor flaked away into a swarm of sparks, and its form shrank as it continued to dissolve.

The last sparks vanished to reveal the Conjurer lying unmoving on the ground.

"Is he dead?" Dudley asked after a moment's hesitation.

Hermione shook her head and walked towards the Conjurer. "He shouldn't be. When people summon Eidolons, they are supposed to fall unconscious after the fight is over. Normally they are the winners, though…" She poked the Conjurer in the side with the end of her bow, and when he did not respond she knelt next to him. "He's breathing, at least, which is a good sign."

"Then let's tie him up and get him out of here," Harry decided. "Dud, find whatever hole they carved for themselves to get into the mine and rip it down. I'm sure the townspeople don't want anyone or any _thing_ sneaking inside. Hermione?" The Stellis looked at him, and he waved back towards the cavern. "Want to go through what these thieves managed to collect? Finders keepers and all that, and I figure you can collect our fee in foslyrite without needing any kind of middleman."

He smiled. "Besides, this way we can gouge an outrageous sum from people who deserve it."

* * *

 **Want to know one of the great things about this world being a video game brought forth into reality? I don't need justifications for stuff like how there could be a natural cavern that makes for a perfect setting in which to have a boss fight. That's just the life of a Hero of Light; don't question it.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	8. Town of Beginnings

**Gremlin Jack:** Well, Harry and co. aren't going to kill the Conjurer out of hand. They're Adventures, not murders. Also, they figure that if summoning an Eidolon is anything like burning through all a mage's magic, he's going to be down for at least a few hours.

 **The Mad Mad Reviewer:** Rejoice, my friend, because there will never be any numbered levels or HP or anything in this fic. The different jobs _do_ have levels that determine what people with those jobs can do, but the only person who will ever see them is me. Mostly so I can keep track of what different characters are capable of.

 **Chicwowwow:** Hecatoncheir is the same spelling as the monster in Greek mythology. It is also one of the many, many summons in the Final Fantasy series. I'll be leaning more on the mythological angle for the other Eidolons that will be mentioned later on, so don't expect to see Ifrit or Shiva or Bahamut running around (even though Square picked those names out of mythology, too).

* * *

 **Chapter 8  
** **Town of Beginnings**

"Two dimma each?" Harry repeated in disbelief. He picked up one of the weapons he, Dudley, and Hermione had 'liberated' from the living quarters and workspaces of the Conjurer's subordinates. Tapping the dagger against the counter, he raised it up towards the curmudgeonly old blacksmith. "This is good steel. I've seen blades as good as this on sale in Glasgow, and they were going for ten or fifteen dimma a piece."

"Which one o' us is the smith here?" grunted the other man. "That might be good steel, sure. Or it might be a load o' crap. No way to know for sure without puttin' 'em through a lot o' tests, and doin' all that'll take longer than jus' meltin' 'em down. There's time and expense there that'd be wasted on bad materials. I'm not throwin' money away like that. I can maybe be talked into four each."

"You're focusing on the chance they're worthless to you, but even still they'd be raw materials to make your own stuff out of. You'll make a profit regardless. All I want is not to get cheated after I went to the effort of getting them."

"And I need to make sure I'm not cheated either, laddie. 'Specially since you're talkin' about what it costs to buy weapons in the city. There's not as much money in nails and buckets and hammers, the kind of stuff we need out here." The smith rolled around the wad of leaf in his cheek before letting out a sigh. "Tell you what. I'll give you forty-five for the eight o' 'em. That's as fair as I can be without takin' a loss on the whole deal. You can take it or leave it."

Forcing himself to take a mental step back, Harry looked over the counteroffer. Forty-five dimma was far from what he had hoped to get, but considering they had picked up the daggers while burglarizing the burglars' den, any money he got for the weapons was profit. Profit he did not even need to purchase supplies since they had raided the kitchen space the Conjurer's men had set up for all their potables. Not to mention, the people of this town had been deprived of their primary source of income for a month, so they understandably felt the need to pinch every penny they ran across. How much would he benefit from continuing to push for more?

"Fine. Forty-five it is."

Finishing up the deal and claiming the agreed-upon coins, Harry left the heat of the smithy and leaned against a wall. Within the town square in front of him an impromptu festival was coming together, the townspeople celebrating the liberation of their mine. Dudley should soon be back from selling off the items they did not want to keep, and with the money from those sales and the reward for the manor job, this promised to be one of the best months they had ever had.

Several minutes later, Dudley and Hermione both walked up to find him sipping from a glass of lemonade he had bought off one of wandering servers. "How'd you make out?" he asked.

"Thirty or so when it's all totaled up," answered Dudley with a shrug. "Not bad for the amount of work we had to do to find it all."

He nodded. "That should be enough to rent the mustids again to get us back to Glasgow. Turns out that stable we dropped them off at yesterday was owned by the same agency as where we got them, so the staff thought we were turning them in."

"You don't even have to do that." Harry turned to look at Hermione, who had a sly smile on her face. "I was coming back from talking to the mayor when I ran into a small caravan. They stopped here to try selling their wares, and they're willing to take us on. They're headed east to another village, and from what they remember, that town has an aviary." She pulled a metal tube out of one pocket and gave it a small shake. "I need to send this foslyrite to the Grange as soon as possible."

"A caravan?" Harry and Dudley glanced at each other to find the same look of confusion. "When you say 'take us on', what exactly do you mean?"

"You guys haven't spent much time outside the Free Cities, have you?" she asked with a shake of her head. "Within the League's borders, merchants can be given an escort by one of the larger official companies upon request, but out here in the hinterlands there's no such guarantee. They can try to go it alone or hire regular guards, sure, but that won't mean anything if they run into one of the more dangerous creatures roaming around. So, depending on who's running the caravan, they're sometimes willing to feed Adventures and let us use them as a taxi service in exchange for having us around to protect them." She shrugs. "It eats into their profits, but better to make a little less money than wind up dead on the road or in some monster's belly."

"And this caravan you found is willing to bring all three of us along?" Dudley pressed.

Hermione grinned. "I dragged you out here to help me. It'd be poor form to leave you behind now."

* * *

The gentle rocking of the cart as it rattled down the dirt road and the summer sun shining down on them was more than enough incentive for Harry to doze lightly. It had been a couple of days since they left Gimli, and so far there had not been anything worth getting excited about; the most action they had encountered was a bomb he and Hermione pelted with spells and arrows until it blew up a respectable distance away from the caravan. Right now, at least one of them was keeping a weather eye out just in case something tried to sneak up on them, but right now it was not his shift.

"Hey, Hermione," he heard Dudley say into the silence, "I've been waiting for two days to see if you'd tell us on your own, but now I have to ask. How do you know so much about Eidolons?"

Harry grunted and pushed the front edge of his straw hat up out of his field of vision. "Gotta say I'm curious too."

The catgirl grimaced and looked away, her ears flatting against her scalp. "Is there any chance I can convince you just to ignore what happened down in the mine?"

"Sorry, but no. Spill."

Hermione glanced at Harry, but then she sighed. Undoing the ties of her leather vest, she took it off and then pulled up the left sleeve of her shirt. Harry was not sure what he was expecting, but thick scars in the shape of a swirling pattern around her shoulder and upper arm was not it.

"It was about three years ago," she said quietly. "A friend and I were coming back from a job. I was still a greenhorn; it might have been my fifth or six job ever? We were just walking along the edge of a cliff when everything went weird. No one ever reported anything like this there, but we had somehow stumbled into the domain of an Eidolon. Boreas, the god of the north wind. What happened next…" She hung her head for a moment before looking back at them. "I can't even call it a fight. Not really. It was just toying with us. It beat me within an inch of my life. Killed Abraham. We weren't a threat to it. It saw us as entertainment. Like a cat that finds a couple of mice."

"But you're still here. You beat it," Dudley reminded her.

Hermione scoffed, "Beat it? You don't beat these things. I couldn't even hurt it. It only left once it got bored. I barely managed to get back to a town, and then I spent the next two months looking for any information I could find about it and its ilk." She tugged her sleeve back down and picked up her vest. "The rules of a fight with an Eidolon are simple. You outlast its assault, or you die. You can't bargain with it. You can't run away from it. If you manage to survive its attacks, it will reach out and brand one person who fought it." Fingers reaching out to touch the hidden mark, she continued, "The brand gives you power. Like you saw with the Conjurer, it lets you become a shadow of that monster. Not that anyone should want to. You're letting an insane and dangerous _thing_ take control of your body."

"You transformed into Boreas at some point, didn't you?" asked Harry in a gentle voice. "You said you and Geoff's group fought another Eidolon bearer before. That was how you know this."

"…I didn't have a choice. It was try it or die. It wasn't like it was the one fighting him, either; I wasn't in control of my body. All I could do was watch with my own eyes as I fought like a maniac." She shuddered. "It's the first and last time I'm ever going to do it.

"An Eidolon brand does one other thing, although this one at least is useful. You remember the griffin I can summon? That's how I can do that. I don't know about all the possible creatures brands can summon, but my griffin is relatively docile. It doesn't lash out at anything and everything like Boreas did. It's the only reason I'm comfortable riding it anywhere."

Turning away from them, she looked out at the landscape in search of any reason to change the subject. "Oh look, a Spire."

Harry decided to cut her some slack and looked in the direction of her gaze. Sure enough, there was a Spire in the middle of the plains beyond them. It was carved or maybe even grown from grey stone, multiple twisting curls criss-crossing like a braid of hair as it reached for the sky. At the very top was a peaked bulb shaped almost like a flame, and even without being able to see inside Harry knew that in the middle of that bulb was a red crystal hanging from the ceiling. He knew it as surely as he knew that the strands of stone on the outside had natural divots to serve as handholds for anyone clever enough or foolish enough to try climbing the outside and avoid the monsters that called the interior home.

"That… looks really familiar," Dudley muttered with a growing frown.

"Because it is." Harry turned back to Hermione. "The town this caravan is headed for. Would it be named Whinging Village, by any chance?"

She nodded slowly. "How did you know that?"

"It's where we grew up."

"Unfortunately," came Dudley's comment.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know. All I asked about was whether they had an aviary." Putting on a brave face, she continued, "But we shouldn't have to be there very long. I send off the foslyrite, you say hi to your families, and then we'll head out before it gets too uncomfortable."

Harry let out a mocking laugh. "Seeing Dudley's parents is what will make it more than just uncomfortable."

The Hunter stared at him for a moment before chancing, "You aren't talking about the wanderlust, are you?"

"Wanderlust?"

She nodded. "The Spires are miraculous. They give us magic powers and a protective aura that lets us survive blows that physically should be more than enough to kill us. You would think everyone would want to claim a Mark, but they don't. Haven't you ever wondered why?"

"Because just climbing a Spire is stupidly dangerous?" guessed Dudley.

"If it were just the danger, the first few people who managed it could kill all the monsters inside and make it safer for everyone else. No, it isn't the risk. It's that these powers aren't free. In exchange for our Marks, Adventures have to suffer an urge to see and explore that keeps us from ever settling down in one place for too long and makes it hard to stand coming back to our hometowns. I've only heard rumors of Adventures who retired, and even then they essentially have to keep their Marks inactive for the rest of their lives. How did you not know this? Haven't you ever gone home, even once, since climbing the Spire?"

"Not a single time," he said. "Remember what you told me about how you became an Adventure so you would have a reason to leave the Riverland Grange?" Hermione nodded. "We did it for the same reason."

"Oh… Now I'm really sorry."

"What's done is done," he replied with a sigh. It was the closest he could get to forgiving her at the moment. Pulling his hat back down, he muttered, "This is going to suck."

* * *

 **Short chapter, but I wanted to get** _ **something**_ **out for you guys. The next couple of months are going to be super hectic (moving back home, studying for my board certification, moving** _ **again**_ **to my new place, starting work, and taking said boards), so if you don't see any updates for a while, now you know why.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	9. Party Management

**Shikyo no Kyoufu:** Maybe it's because my introduction to Final Fantasy was with the later games (FFX was actually the first RPG I played _ever_ ), but to me Eidolons/Espers/Aeons are story-wise supposed to be dangerous enemies if you face them in battle and amazing allies once you win their allegiance. I wanted to portray them this way here, too.

 **Um the Muse:** No, I can't say that I've ever played Slay the Spire. It sounds like it could be interesting, but I sadly still have a backlog of games to play and other RL things to do, so I won't be able to get to it for a while.

* * *

 **Chapter 9  
** **Party Management**

The wagons pulled to a stop, and Harry hopped off the rooftop onto the ground. Dudley and Hermione were right behind him, and the catgirl sent the traders at the front of the caravan a short wave. "So this is Whinging Village?" she asked after taking a look around.

Harry let his eyes wander over the town that had been his home – if only for a very generous definition of the word – for eight years, and thirteen if he included the days before the Transition. In the center of the village where they stood was a market square with shops and a small inn. The vast majority of the buildings farther out were simple one-story affairs that would be large enough for a single family. A low wall surrounded the town to keep out wild beasts. At first glance, it looked like any other village that could be found dotted over the face of Gaia.

It was on the second and third glances that the cracks in the facade started becoming visible. Every house on a single street, he knew, were nearly perfect copies of one another. Hedges were all cut to the precisely same height; the paint on one porch had been used on the next. Even houses that initially were different right after the Transition had been changed over the years to match their neighbors, even if it involved substantial work. No effort was wasted in blending with everybody else. The effect was disorienting, disturbing even.

To hear the old-timers talk, back when it had been Little Whinging, this had still been the case. Nobody wanted to stand out. Nobody wanted to be 'different' or 'abnormal'. He could barely imagine what his life would have been like without the Crystals and magic offering him an escape from this dull existence.

"Unfortunately," he muttered.

Hermione frowned at that response. She looked around again, and as her eyes panned over the clusters of people milling about the square, her ears dipped and her tail curled around her leg. "Why is everyone looking at me?"

Both Harry and Dudley winced at that question. Sure enough, any child too young to care about propriety was staring openly at the Hunter, but even the adults continuously flicked eyes in her direction as though they were not sure what to make of her presence. Dudley let his shoulders sag. "It's because you're a Stellis."

"…I don't know what to say to that." She examined the crowd watching her, and her frown deepened. "I don't see any Osgul or Eddek, either. It's all humans. Is the entire village like this?"

A nod was Dudley's response to her question. "Back when we lived here, at least, there was a single Stellis who worked at the pub, and a couple of Kobolds. Even they faced a lot of resistance. Osgul and Eddek who wanted to live here were told outright to move along. Most people here aren't big fans of other races."

"Adventurers either," added Harry bitterly. "Monsters and freaks aren't welcome. Nothing that disrupts their perfectly ordinary lives."

Dudley reached over to clap a hand on his shoulder. "Their loss. Let's just get to the aviary and send off the foslyrite. Then we can find some mustids and head back north to Glasgow."

He sighed and shook his head. That sounded like a fine plan to him, if not for one errand he needed to run first. "I need to take my coat to a clothier while we are in town. The fight with the Conjurer ruined the sleeve, remember? If they can and will fix it by tomorrow, I'd like to have it done before we leave."

It was a minor thing overall, but it still bothered him. The long red coat was as much a symbol of his class as his rapier; anyone who saw it knew he was a Fencer. He had enough pride in his skills that he wanted that immediate recognition back.

"So we split up," Hermione said. "Dudley can guide me to the aviary. While we are doing that, you see if you can get your coat fixed. We'll meet up again here."

"I can join you at the aviary if I'm done before you. It's not a long walk."

The pair started walking down the street, and he sighed before turning in the opposite direction. There were a couple of shops he could visit, but considering the kind of people who called Whinging Village home, most of them would rather spit on him than do any work for him. There was one, however, who might do it.

He just hoped the curmudgeonly old biddy was not dead yet.

A little brass bell tinkled over the door. "Madam Presley?" he called out.

"What do you want?" shouted a creaky voice. The curtain to the back of the shop was pulled aside, and an elderly woman with heavy wrinkles and frown lines stormed out. She walked closer, and her scowl deepened. "Oh. It's you. Thought we finally saw the last of you, Potter."

"And I thought the same about all of you, but unfortunately we had a job that needs something sent off. This is the closest aviary."

"That doesn't explain what you're doing in my shop."

He rolled his eyes. "Why does anybody ever come in here? You do good work. I need something repaired."

She gave him a dismissive sniff and an impatient wave to come closer. Pulling the coat out of his enchanted pouch, he spread it out over her table. Presley blinked at the charred sleeve and looked back up at him. "I remember making this coat. You wanted something like those weirdos wear. What in heaven's name did you do to it, boy?"

"Had an encounter with a bomb that went south."

"And here you are just fine," she muttered. "That's just like weaselly little snots like you. If you're going to ruin good work like this, just get yourself killed in the process and stop causing problems for everybody else."

Harry could not hold back a snort at that. There was a reason he was willing to put up with Presley's insults: they were not personal. She treated _everyone_ like this. It did not matter if she was talking to the mayor or an Adventurer, she was guaranteed to look down on them as though they were scum she wiped off her shoe. The fact that she was very good at her job was the only reason she was tolerated by the townspeople.

He stuck his hand in the pouch and fished out a fat golden ten dimma coin. Setting it on its edge on the table, he gave it a practiced flick to make it spin. "If I didn't damage it, how could I pay you to fix it?" he asked when her gaze fell on the spinning coin.

Irritation warred with greed on her face, but inevitably greed won out and she snatched up the coin. "Fine. I can replace the sleeve. It'll be done by the end of the week."

"I need it back no later than tomorrow."

"I have other customers waiting on their orders too, boy. I can't drop them just because you're impatient." A second coin fell onto the table, and a crooked smile appeared on her face. "But I suppose I could work late tonight and get it done faster if it will get me rid of you."

"Pleasure doing business with you, too," he lied.

With the coat in the old woman's hands, Harry left the shop and started his way back down the main street. Along the way, he let his eyes drift from store to store and compared it with his memories. Everything was exactly the way it had been when he and Dudley lived here. Not a single shop looked to have moved or even changed their window decorations in two years. It was rather eerie, in all honesty.

At the end of the street rose the aviary, a three-story building with open windows ringing the top floor. In and out of those windows flew doves and pigeons with letters or small parcels tied to their legs, as well as the occasional falcon carrying a package too heavy for the smaller birds. He let a small smile show as he remembered how much the villagers argued about whether to build the aviary when it became clear to everyone that the monsters native to Gaia meant adopting a postal service similar to what had been present on Earth was nothing more than a pleasant dream. For all that using birds to carry mail was 'backwards' and 'barbaric', when faced with the choice between birds and isolation, the final outcome was never in question.

A knot of people stood in front of the doors to the aviary, and he did not need to hear what they were saying to know it was ugly. He also knew exactly who was the cause. He cursed himself for not thinking of this ahead of time. Two Adventurers, one of whom was non-human? Of course they were going to attract attention, and in this town essentially any attention was negative.

One voice rose above the others, and Harry started running.

"Running off and joining those freaks wasn't enough for you? You have to sleep around with _animals_ for kicks? I raised you better than this, boy!"

Harry broke through the crowd to find Dudley standing in front of Hermione with his heads clenched into fists and raised to his waist, almost as if he was afraid a fistfight was about to break out. The reason for his concern and reluctance was obvious. Fifteen feet away stood an older man, his skin hanging off him slightly as if his substantial girth had been even greater once upon a time. Not a surprise, really; there was no Grunnings in this world, nor any need for a drill salesman, and so Vernon Dursley had been forced to turn to what marketable skills he possessed beyond bullying his subordinates and schmoozing up to easily flattered superiors.

It was really no surprise he had no other options than to become a manual laborer.

What was a surprise was the bottle in Vernon's hand and the red flush to his face. Back when Harry and Dudley had been growing up, before they skipped town to make their own way in the world, he had a fondness for drink. It was the one way to remove himself from his tedious life he still had in a world without television. But never would he have allowed himself to be seen drunk in the middle of the day. It was, in Petunia's words, 'unseemly'. Had the need for basic labor dried up enough that fewer workers were needed? Or had Vernon's lip finally gotten him the boot?

Sunlight glinted off the bottle in Vernon's hand, and the man smashed it against the wall of the aviary. Harry tightened his hand around the hilt of his sword. The 'why' of Vernon's drinking was irrelevant at this moment. All that mattered was whether or not he was dumb enough to threaten Dudley and Hermione. If he took even a single step forward…

Vernon raised the broken bottle and took a stumbling step towards them.

Boots skidding to a stop on the slick cobblestone, Harry lightly pressed the tip of the rapier into the fleshy hollow of Vernon's throat. "That's far enough."

"You!"

Behind him, Dudley's armor rattled as he relaxed. "Good timing, cuz."

"I told you what was going to happen to you if I ever saw your worthless hide again, boy," Vernon said with a snarl. He tried to lunge at Harry, but the rapier digging just the tiniest fraction into his skin stopped him cold. A bead of ruby blood welled up and ran down his neck.

Harry watched his uncle's face alternate between puce and pallor as dispassionately as he could, anger and a child's fear both being forced down to be dealt with later. "I don't want to fight you, Vernon, but if you start one, I guarantee that only one of us will walk away." With where his blade was pointed, it would take a single jab to send the portly man to the ground choking to death on his own blood.

Dudley was right; his timing here was impeccable. It would have been beyond cruel to force Dudley to kill his own father, particularly when he had sufficient contempt for the man to ward away the guilt.

"Clear the road! Clear the road!" someone shouted. The crowd shuffled apart just enough for a man in scuffed armor and a green scarf around his waist to elbow his way past. The shield embroidered on the end of the scarf identified him as one of the town guard, and a newbie at that unless they had changed the color scheme since Harry and Dudley left. He took in the scene in front of him and grimaced. "What's this, then? Some outsiders causing trouble?"

Vernon's piggy little eyes narrowed, and he seized the opportunity the guard gave him. "That's right, officer. These strangers attacked me. Throw them in a cell!"

"Hardly strangers, even if you did disown me after we climbed the Spire," Dudley countered. "Morning, Piers. Mum told me you got inducted into the guard a couple weeks back. How's that treating you?"

Harry looked closer at the guard. He remembered Piers Polkiss, a rat-faced boy who had followed Dudley around like a flunky for a few years before Dudley's interest in the outside world grew too intense for the inhabitants of Whinging Village. Now that he had a reference, he could definitely see the similarities.

"It was going good until today," answered Piers. "Didn't expect you or Potter to ever show your faces around here again."

"Neither did we, honestly, but we had a package we had to send out as soon as we could. Dad spotted us coming out and thought it'd be a good idea to threaten us with that broken bottle in his hand." Vernon threw the bottle to the side in what Harry could only guess he thought was an inconspicuous manner. "Harry jumped in to defend us, and then you showed up."

"He's lying!"

Piers sighed. "You're drunk, Vernon. Go home, or I'll have to take you in and send for Petunia. Your choice. The rest of you, clear out and go back to what you were doing."

The crowd dispersed with a grumble at the show ending so soon and anticlimactically. Vernon tried to argue with the dismissal, but faced with Piers's stern scowl he relented. "Come near my house, either of you, and I won't be responsible for what happens!" he shouted at them as he stormed off.

With the threat gone, no matter how small it had been, Harry sheathed his sword. Dudley passed him to try shaking Piers's hand, but the childhood acquaintance just stared at him as though he had some kind of disease. After a few awkward moments, Dudley lowered his hand. "How long has he… been like that?"

"Like that? Bit over a year. Your mum told me he started drinking more not long after you ran off." Dudley frowned at that comment, and Piers sighed. "Look. You two grew up here, but this isn't your home anymore. We have enough problems without your kind running around making things worse."

"Our kind?" Harry echoed in disgust.

"We don't consider it home, either," Dudley told Piers. "We're just here to take care of a few things, then we'll be on our way. Harry, did you find someone to fix your coat?"

He nodded. "She'll work on it tonight."

"Then we'll be headed out tomorrow as soon as he picks his coat up."

Piers considered that for a few seconds. "Fine. Be out of here by sundown tomorrow, and I'll forget all about that cut on your dad's neck. Just don't cause any more trouble between now and then."

"Don't worry, Piers. We don't want to be here any longer than we have to, either."

* * *

Harry pushed open the door and walked into the bar the following afternoon, his freshly repaired red coat swishing about him. He only had a brief glance of Dudley's smirking mug before arms wrapped around his neck and pulled him backwards into a full chest.

"You didn't think you were going to sneak away without saying hello to me, did you Harry?"

He sighed in fake resignation and pulled away just enough that he could turn around. The smile on the blonde woman's face was infectious, and he quickly returned the embrace. "It's good to see you again too, Rita. Dudley, you could have warned me she was there."

"Yeah, I could've, but where's the fun in that?"

He stepped out of the hug. Now that her affection had been returned, Rita all but skipped to the bar, her tail twitching in the happy dance all cats and Stellis took part in. "I'm glad you two stopped by. I honestly wasn't sure we'd ever get the chance to see you again."

"You're about the only one around here who's glad," Dudley told her. "We looked for you yesterday, but you weren't here. It was some other guy passing out the drinks. We were actually afraid you had been run out of town just like us."

"Kick _me_ out? They wouldn't dare." Rita pulled down a trio of glasses and a bottle from the top shelf and proceeded to pour a finger of whiskey into each. "These people might hate me for being a Stellis and you for following your dreams, but those nosy housewives would sooner cut off their own hands then get rid of me. I'm the best source of gossip they could ever wish for, and they know it."

They walked up to the bar so Rita could pass a glass to Harry and Dudley, but when Hermione tried reaching for the last, the older cat-woman pulled it out of her reach. "Sorry, hun, but this is for my boys, not little hanger-ons."

"Excuse me?" Hermione demanded.

Harry looked over her brown hair to find Dudley looking back, and they both quickly turned away to keep from laughing. That probably would not be appreciated. Still, there was no reason they could not try to keep this from turning bloody. "It's nothing personal, Hermione," he told her. "Rita and we just go way back."

"Way back, huh?" She looked over the clearly un-Marked woman with offended disdain. "Do I even want to know what favors you did for them once upon a time?"

"She's pretty much the only person here who doesn't hate Adventurers." Dudley's quiet words stole most of the wind out of her sails. "As Harry and I grew up, we wanted more and more to leave this place. There's a whole world outside these walls, but nobody here, not even the other kids our own age, wanted to see it. Anyone we brought it up to just told us to stay here where it's 'safe' and 'normal'."

Rita cleared her throat. "And somebody would tell Vernon about those talks later. Dudley would get scolded, and Harry would get beaten."

Hermione whipped her head around to look at Harry, and he hastily shook his head. "It wasn't that bad."

"Where did Dudley take you when you were hurt bad enough you needed someone to patch you up? Oh, right, he brought you to me. I can guarantee you that it was that bad." Rita shook her head. "Anyway, it didn't take a genius to realize they were meant for bigger things than this place. I was the one who helped them prepare to climb the Spire and gain their Marks, and then I made sure they had supplies when they snuck away in the night. Vernon and Petunia were in a right state for the next few days. It's a good thing you left when you did because otherwise I think he might have actually tried to kill you, Harry."

"Didn't you hear, Rita?" Dudley swallowed the rest of his whiskey and set the glass back on the bar. "He threatened to do that just yesterday. It's one of several reasons we're headed out soon. We were just waiting for Harry's coat to be fixed and to see you."

"Aww, you do love me," Rita purred. "It'll probably be for the best, though. I don't know what kind of enemies you two have made, but there was somebody in the square today asking about you. The sooner you leave, the bigger a head start you'll have on him."

"Asking about us?" Harry asked.

"Mm-hmm. Blond boy, lots of bling and arrogance. He reminded me of a spellsinger, actually," she added softly, almost as though she were talking to herself.

The three Adventurers looked at one another in confusion. Spellsinger? Harry had known Rita since she moved into town perhaps a year after the Transition, but this was the first time he had ever heard that word before. From the others' expressions, they were as lost as he was. "I don't think you've ever told us about the spellsingers before, Rita."

A blush lit up her face. "I don't suppose you boys would be willing to forget I said that, would you?" When they shook their heads, she sighed and grabbed the empty glasses to clean. "It doesn't really matter here, I guess. Back on our world, where we lived before the Transition threw us and humans and all the other races together, there was a group of us who had special powers. Unlike the majority of Stellis, we had the gift of magic in our voices. With a verse, we could make the impossible possible."

"I've never heard of a 'spellsinger' before," Hermione challenged.

"Of course you wouldn't have, girl. We kept to ourselves. We had an entire society completely separate from the rest of you." Her shoulders slumped. "Not that it really matters now, I suppose. The Transition took away but the simplest of my powers, and after spending a year on this world looking for any of the others, I'm pretty sure they are just as powerless as I am."

"We're sorry we brought it up," Harry said, reaching over to cover her hand with his own. Rita was his and Dudley's oldest friend – other than each other, of course – and now that he knew he regretted pursuing it. He did not want to see her in pain at what she had lost.

Rita gave him a watery smile and pulled her hand away to start drying the glasses. "Anyway. I don't know if humans had any magic before you were pulled to this place, but regardless that's what he reminds me of for some reason. You want to be careful."

"That just makes me more curious about why he's asking about us," Dudley said. He rubbed his chin in thought, and then his face brightened. "Do you think you can get him to come here?"

"…Dudley, that is the opposite of what I meant when I told you to be careful."

"No, no, hear me out. If he's looking for us, that means he doesn't know we know he's looking. He won't expect us to be ready for him if he wants to try something nasty." Dudley looked over at Rita. "You still have that busboy working for you, right? Send him over to whoever's looking for us. Have him say you're willing to sell him the information or something. Send him up to our room upstairs, and we'll be waiting. If he's an enemy, we'll have the element of surprise, and if he's friendly, then we have a nice private chat about why he's following us. It's perfect!"

"Perfect isn't the word I'd use, but it's not terrible, I guess. I'm curious why he wants you so bad, too." She dries her hands off as she thinks, and then she nods. "Okay. I'll send Paul out to find him. You three head upstairs. Quickly!"

The trio of Adventurers hurried upstairs, and Dudley closed the door before raising his axe to his shoulder. Harry's blade was out, Hermione had an arrow nocked. Now it was a matter of patience.

Minutes ticked by one after another, and Harry began to wonder if this plan was about to work at all. Finally, after a solid ten minutes waiting, something happened. It was not the door being thrown open and a crazed killer rushing in, however.

It was a knock on the door.

They traded looks again. Knocking obviously did not guarantee that the man following them was friendly, but it was a point in favor of that interpretation. The knocking came again, and a voice asked, "Anyone inside?"

Harry gave Dudley a nodded and whispered, "Let him in."

His cousin turned the knob and opened the door. "Thank you," a cultured voice said as its owner walked through the door. Harry found himself staring in surprise. He recognized that floppy yellow hat and the blue cape draped around the man's shoulders. It was the man who had hired sixty Adventurers to explore the manor, the same manor where he and Dudley had met Hermione.

The man's eyes scanned the room until they found Harry, and he gave a nod and thumped his dandy cane against the floor. "We did not get a chance to talk after you finished the raid, you and I. I had hoped to speak with you the day after, but you had already left for parts unknown. I've had a devil of a time keeping up with you," the man said with a frown.

This guy had been following them since they left Scunth? Harry blinked in surprise. It had been a week since then. That was dedication if nothing else. "I'm sorry? Or, I would be if I weren't wondering just what you're doing following us in the first place."

"Before I tell you, I want to know that you are who you say you are. You said your name was Harry Potter, yes?" Harry nodded. "Son of James and Lily Potter?"

How…? "Why do you know their names? Why are you following us?"

The man pulled his hat off and slicked back his pale blond hair before offering his hand. "That day at the manor wasn't the first time I've heard of you. My name is Draco Malfoy, and I would appreciate your assistance on a… let's call it a profitable venture."

* * *

 **Ha ha! Who could have predicted** _ **this**_ **twist?! Actually several of you did, but I don't care because I'm looking forward to what happens from here on out. It's time to get to the meat of the story.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	10. The Escape

" **Rita… Skeeter?":** Would I take a widely reviled character like Rita Skeeter and turn her into a positive influence? Would I really? …Okay, yeah I would do that in a heartbeat. I haven't played with her much (aside from enslaving and killing her in the Black Queen series), so even though she doesn't have much of a part to play in this story, it was still fun to paint her in a different light like this.

 **Dadycoool:** Well to start, Harry didn't live in Little Whinging for 13 years. He lived there for 5 years, then the Transition happened, and he was in Whinging Village for another 8 before he and Dudley set out on their own as Adventurers two years before the "start" of this story. They are both sixteen at this time.

As for why he did not go to Hogwarts, I had hoped by now to show that just about _everything_ about Earth society has been screwed up to hell and back. That includes what remains of the Wizarding World. They had bigger problems than sending off invitations to school.

 **It's been… not the longest I've ever gone between updates, but about a month or so now? Longer than I like, anyway, and compounded by the fact that I've been working pretty much nonstop on my quest. I was at one of those story arcs that's necessary and yet a pain to write, so I wanted to get it over with. I feel like I owe you guys at least a couple of updates of this story as a result, so yeah. All Eternal Fantasy all the way for the next few weeks.**

* * *

 _ **Last time on Eternal Fantasy…**_

 _The trio of Harry and Dudley returned to their hometown of Whinging Village so Hermione could send off the foslyrite they had found to save the live of a little girl. The second day of their stay, and the day they already planned to leave, they were approached by a former client who introduced himself as Draco Malfoy and offered a partnership in what he described only as a 'profitable venture'._

* * *

 **Chapter 10  
** **The Escape**

Harry and Dudley had encountered a number of clients over the last couple of years working as Adventurers, and while many of them liked the tried and true contract, others preferred the personal touch. Tracking them for a week was extreme but not unbelievable, or would not have been were they famous Adventurers or made an extremely good first impression. That being said, none of them as far as Harry could remember had ever opened up an offer by showing far more knowledge of his family than anyone not named Potter or Dursley should have.

"We'll take on a number of ventures," he answered, letting the creepy knowledge of his past slide for the moment. "But we need a little more information than just that you expect it to be profitable. When, where, what, that sort of thing."

"Ah, yes," Malfoy said, dropping his gloved hand and putting an obvious salesman's smile on. "True enough. I hope you can forgive me my enthusiasm. As I'm sure you recall, I previously hired you alongside many other Adventurers to find enchanted objects in the manor. I simply hoped we might do the same again, perhaps with a bit more equitable division of the profits."

The idea that Malfoy had earned far more from his sale of all the stuff they had found than that he had paid them was no great surprise. If it he had merely broken even, there would be no point to the entire thing. What was a surprise was that he would seek them out specifically for a repeat. That and describing the items as enchanted. Storing spells in scrolls was not an uncommon practice; Harry had spent the first winter after he and Dudley left the village doing just that with Cure spells to sell them on the cheap to other new Adventures so they could actually make ends meet for a couple of months when there were no jobs to be had.

None of the things they had found were scrolls, though, and no one on Gaia had ever thought about making paintings that could move on their own so far as he was aware. Rita's description of the blond in front of them as being similar to one of her spellsingers, however, put that in a very different light. If the bartender was to be believed, the Stellis had a group of magicians before being pulled from their original world during the Transition. Might not the same be true of humanity, hard as it was to imagine?

"Why us?" Hermione asked, pulling Malfoy's attention away from Harry. "Or perhaps more accurately, why Harry? It can't just be because we found two of those wands you were looking for."

Malfoy shook his head. "It wasn't that. I simply thought Mr. Potter and I might pool our knowledge to find more."

"Find more?" he asked in surprise. "I'm as decent at tracking as most Adventurers are, but that's finding monsters. Not furniture and crap, and definitely not when I don't know what we would be looking for. I wouldn't know something enchanted from anything else."

His statement replaced the dandy's smile with a frown. "What about where you grew up? If you point me in that direction, I would be willing to split the proceeds with you."

Harry waved a hand around them. "Look around you. Normally I'd be happy to help you take anything from just about anyone in this town, but I think you would be wasting your time. The people here hate anything abnormal with a passion, and I expect that would apply to this enchanted stuff of yours too."

"You grew up Muggle?" Malfoy said, his careful expression falling away to reveal true surprise. That surprise quickly morphed into contemplation. "So that's why you use Gaian magic. You don't understand a word I've been saying, do you?"

"So humans also had a native group of magic-users? I know we did before the Transition," Hermione cut in, sounding for all the world as though she had not just learned about this ten minutes ago, "but I thought it was just our race."

Her deception, as sudden as it was, still seemed to work because Malfoy nodded. "We did as well. We kept ourselves separate from Muggles – humans without magic – except for when we had to interact or when wizards were born to Muggles." He turned back to Harry. "Your parents were part of our world before their deaths, and then you disappeared. No one knew where you were, or at least no one who knew was willing to reveal it. I apologize for catching you off-guard about it. I assumed, like everyone else did, that you had been raised in a magical household."

"A household you wanted to plunder like the manor you hired us to raid?" Hermione asked, earning a nod from Malfoy. She scowled at him. "You would sell off his family's property?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Considering the manor I hired you to 'plunder' is where I grew up before the Transition, I promise it isn't personal. The wand you found that caught me by surprise?" he continued, his voice growing hard. "That belonged to my mother. She died in that house to buy time for my father to get me to safety. I was not asking him to make any sacrifice that I have not made myself, and I resent the implication."

Hermione looked away, her face flushed with shame. "Sorry."

"You raided your own home?" Dudley asked, speaking up for the first time since this explanation started. "Why?"

"Let's just say that enchanted items from Earth are in high demand," Malfoy replied cagily. "They are also, unfortunately, difficult to recover because every location with a high concentration of magic was almost immediately overrun with monsters following the Transition. Several of our most important buildings, such as the Ministry building where we had our government, are still lost.

"For the last couple of years I have been tracking down all the homes where I knew even their vague locations. My family's manor was the last one I knew about. I was hoping you would know some more, Potter."

How quickly the 'mister' fell away when it became clear he had no information to offer. Still, Harry thought, he could not blame Malfoy entirely for that considering the blond had apparently followed them for a week just to speak with him. There was one question that still lingered at the front of his mind, however. "You said I disappeared from your society. Why? I'm nobody important."

"Some would disagree with that. Regardless, you were hidden away due to politics that are no longer important to anyone on either side," was Malfoy's dry reply.

"I have to admit," Dudley said with a sigh, "I find all this really hard to believe. A society of wizards? Magic on Earth? It's just, this all sounds like something from a storybook, not real life."

A single knock came from the door before Rita poked her head inside. She must have been worried that he would be too much for them. Harry appreciated how much she cared, but he had to shake his head at the idea that three of them with the element of surprise on their side could be so easily beaten. He was about to say something to that very effect when he noted the serious expression on her face. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"We have a problem."

Going across the hall, the five of them stared out a window at the street below. A contingent of guards was assembling in front of the inn, and while Harry might not know what their motivation was, it was easy to guess that it was not to welcome them to the neighborhood. A familiar head of hair joined the group, and his eyes narrowed. "Piers. We told him we were leaving today, didn't we? Does he think we need an escort or something?"

"I don't think they plan to let us leave anytime soon," Dudley said, pointing out four sets of heavy iron manacles hanging from some of the guards' hands. "But who's the last one for?"

"I wonder," Rita said into the silence that followed, her eyes focused on Malfoy. "They know the three of you are together, but do they know why he wanted to find you?"

"You think they think he is part of our group." Rita nodded at Hermione's guess, and the younger of the catwomen turned her gaze back to the guards. "It would give them the justification to arrest us for that fight we had with your father, Dudley. If the people here are as racist and xenophobic as you two have implied, I would rather not hand myself over to their tender mercies. There is no telling what people like that will do when they are given power. Is there another way out?"

"If they are this serious about arresting you, they should have locked the gates and posted people there. You won't be able to walk out."

Dudley's eyes met Harry's. "There is always the way we used to get out of here last time."

The way they used last time? "You have got to be kidding me," he groused. When they ran away from Dudley's parents in the middle of the night, they had decided not to risk being seen before they were long gone Whinging Village. Instead of slipping out the gates, they picked a route that no one in their right mind would choose.

"Do you have a better idea?"

He did not, and Dudley knew it too. Harry turned to Rita. "Do you think you can distract them long enough for us to sneak out the back?"

"I can do better than that. Come closer, all of you, and grab somebody's hand." She motioned from them to come close enough that she could lay one hand on Dudley's shoulder and the other on Malfoy's, who made the opposite end of their chain. Rita closed her eyes and schooled her expression. "I lost most of my powers when we came to this world, but I should have enough left for this."

For all that Rita had called her people's native magicians 'spellsingers', what came from her mouth was no aria or ditty. It was a low, ominous chant in a language he could not make heads nor tails of. The words had a weight to them that nothing in English ever could; he could practically feel them landing on his shoulders and wrapping around his wrists.

"Walk downstairs and go out the back door. Don't let go of each other until you are outside out of sight. My spell did not make you invisible," she warned, opening her eyes to stare meaningfully into his, "but as long as you do not draw attention to yourselves, no one outside should pay you any mind. Now go."

They hurried down the stairs as quietly as they could. Harry felt ridiculous holding onto Dudley's and Hermione's hands like he was, but he did it nonetheless. Rita's magic was a new discovery, but he knew the woman who had done it and gave them this warning. He had trusted her with his life before, and she had not let him down nor left him to fend for himself. If she said this was necessary, then necessary it was.

There was no one waiting in the pub, and bereft of any watching eyes they practically ran into the kitchens and through the door at the very back of the building. "Where's this secret path you two were talking about?" Hermione demanded.

"Over here." Dudley led them down the street and around the corner into a narrow alleyway. Their destination was three streets over from the pub, but finally they reached a tiny intersection between three alleys. On one wall was a door that almost blended in with the tan stone of the building. The Knight released Harry's hand so he could grab the handle and give it a mighty tug, but for all his strength the door refused to budge. "Damn. It's locked again."

"Allow me." Malfoy strode up to it, shifting his grip on his cane halfway down its length so he could touch the ornate sphere on the grip to the handle. His left hand he raised and thrust forward as though pounding on the air. "Knock knock."

The lock clicked in the following silence.

"Would have been nice to have you around last time," Harry could not help but say. It was no spell he had ever heard about, but he had never met a wizard before today either. "We spent more than an hour picking that lock."

The blond smirked. "It is a useful little trick."

With the door open before them, all of them except Dudley ran down the stairs into the darkness. Harry found a couple of torches resting at the bottom where he expected them to be and lit them with a Flare spell; the light was Dudley's signal to shut the door, cutting them off from the outside world.

Hermione looked around at the wrought iron rails and the single door that surrounded them like a cage. "What is this place? It looks very different from the rest of the town."

"No surprise there. Most people here stay out if at all possible." Harry opened the door leading deeper into the complex. "Nobody likes to spend their time in a sewer, after all, but that should play to our advantage."

"A sewer?" Malfoy's lip curled in disgust. "This is the best escape you can think of?"

"Maybe not the best, but definitely the fastest. Unless you would prefer to tussle with the guards?" taunted Dudley. He took one of the torches from Harry and waved it down both sides of the tunnel. "Just watch out for the rats."

"Are these rats normal in size and possessing a timid disposition?" Hermione asked in a resigned voice. It was almost as if she had run into overlarge, overly aggressive rats before and had no desire to do so again. That was a feeling Harry could understand very well.

Sadly, he had to dash her hopes. "Not unless the guards really cleared this place out after we left. I wouldn't count on that, though."

"On the plus side, we didn't see any slimes when we were here," Dudley chipped in. "The last sewer we were hired to explore, we had to deal with slimes that could teleport us around whenever we got too close. It's just rats and the occasional tunnel snake down here."

"Fantastic." She raised her bow and loosed a single arrow. Following its flight, Harry found a three-foot long rat pinned to the wall. "Just what I wanted to hear. Let's just get out of here as soon as possible."

They started walking through the tunnels, being careful to stay on the raised paths on either side of the murky sludge that ran through the center. The exact route they took was less important than the overall direction; so long as they walked away from the center of town, eventually the tunnels would merge and lead to the nearby river. As they journeyed, however, Harry could not help but notice something missing. Perhaps it was the intervening years reshaping his memories, but he could swear that when he and Dudley had escaped from Whinging Village last time, they had to fight through what seemed like hordes of rats. Now, though?

Harry thrust his arm forward and shoved the blade of his rapier into a rat's head, killing it instantly. This was only the third rat they had seen in five minutes of walking. "Hey, Dud? Is it just me, or was it a lot worse last time?"

"I was thinking the same thing," his cousin answered. "Part of it might be that we aren't brand new Adventurers anymore, you know? It was the first real dungeon we ever entered. It looked big and scary, but we've been in bigger and scarier places since then. Now it's nothing special."

"Yeah. I suppose that could be it," he agreed with a nod.

Dudley threw open a door and stopped in his tracks. The room beyond looked like it had been covered by a giant furry carpet, but as that carpet undulated it because clear that they were staring at a gigantic collection of rats crawling over each other. Realizing what they were looking at, Dudley added with a squeak, "Or maybe the difference is that now it's mating season and they're all in here?"

"Shut the door!"

It was too late for that. The creak of the door opening had distracted some of the rats from their murine orgy, and with a wave of red the sewer-beasts turned to stare at them with eyes that reflected the torches' light. A low hiss from several hundred throats washed over them. Those nearest the door pulled away from the rest and took a few steps towards the party.

"This can't be the only way in or out," Hermione said. "Not with it being closed. We can't bottleneck them in here. They'll surround us and rush in."

"Not if we kill them first." Malfoy shoved Harry out of the way and stretched out his cane again. With his left hand, he sketched an all-too-familiar symbol.

"Megaflare."

An ear-ringing bang echoed through the room as the big brother to the Flare spell Harry knew exploded in the middle of the rats. It was hot enough to cook instantly the rats nearby, but it would not be enough to kill all of them.

Malfoy made the Flare symbol again, but there was no desperation to the action. Instead he wore a slight grin. "Inflammum mundus."

The fire of the still-burning pelts flared up, blackening the ceiling of the room. Malfoy twisted his wrist and turned the head of his cane in a small circle; as though following his movements, the tall fires reached out and swirled around and around. They did not collapse in on themselves but instead spread, filling the room with flames. The wizard took a few steps back as the rats nearest the door and therefore furthest from his flames arrived at the door only to face Dudley's axe and Harry's blade.

After fifteen seconds or so, Malfoy stopped his spell and allowed the fire to dissipate. Everything within had been reduced to charcoal. "You might want to wait a bit for the room to cool down. It's rather hot in there right now."

"How did you do that?" Dudley demanded. "You said you were a wizard. Flare is a spell from this world. Isn't it?"

"It is, and wizards cannot cast any spell granted by the Spires." Malfoy tugged on the fingers of the glove covering his left hand and finally pulled it off. The back of that hand held a red mark not dissimilar from that on any of theirs. His grin grew wider at their stupefied expressions. "But just because I am a wizard doesn't mean I can't also be a Sorcerer."

…Suddenly the strange cane made a terrifying amount of sense. It was just a long wand, hidden in plain sight!

"Now, shall we continue on? I would like to be rid of this place sooner than later."

The majority of the rats in the entire sewer must have been congregated in that room because the rest of the walk was silent and unremarkable. Light eventually made its appearance down one of the longest tunnels, and they walked out of the wide mouth to the sight of a river placidly running past them. "Excellent," Malfoy said after taking a deep breath of the fresh air. "How far are we from the village itself? I left my mustid tied up a short distance outside the walls."

"You tied your ride up outside? Why not inside the village where it would be safe from monsters?" Hermione asked.

That question caught the blond wizard by surprise. "Oh. That's, er… This isn't exactly the first time I've ever been run out of town." He coughed in embarrassment. "Fire is a lot easier to create than it is to control."

"Suddenly I don't think I want to know the details," Dudley muttered to Harry.

Pointing him in the right direction led to all of them walking that way. It was obvious when they had found his ride; no one else Harry had ever met would be so vain as to ride an albino mustid whose pelt perfectly matched Malfoy's white-blond hair. The wizard untied the beast before stopping; after several seconds, he turned back to the group. "You still don't believe me about the Wizarding World, do you?"

"You haven't exactly given us any proof," pointed out Dudley.

"Fair enough. What if I did? I need to visit the largest remnants of our old world anyway." He shrugged. "You could easily come along."

"Why?" Malfoy shot Harry a strange look, and he quickly continued, "Why invite us? The way you made it sound, this is supposed to be a secret society of yours. We're outsiders."

Malfoy pointed his cane at Harry. "True, but you shouldn't be. You are one of us, whether you knew it before today or not. As for the rest of you, let's just say showing Muggles what is left of our world would not be the worst thing I've ever done. It's not like anyone can enforce the bloody Statute of Secrecy anyway."

"Is that thing big enough for three of us?" Dudley asked.

"It only needs to be big enough for two." Harry turned to Hermione, who was already summoning the windstorm that would give birth to her griffon. "I want to see this place, too. He made me curious, and no one can keep me from sating my curiosity."

"I'll ride with you, then. That griffon thing looks too small for my tastes." Harry looked back at Dudley to see his cousin subtly tapping the short dagger he carried sheathed on his belt. It was his weapon of choice whenever they had to fight in close quarters that were not amenable to an axe, and Harry could only guess that Dudley was signaling he would be keeping an eye out for betrayal.

He shook his head and walked over to Hermione and her mount. "Mind if I ride with you, then?"

"Come on up." He clambered onto the creature, and Hermione nudged it with her knees to make it follow the others. "This shouldn't be an issue, but just so we're clear: keep your hands below the chest and above the waist. I've met grabby humans before, and I don't want to deal with it again."

"You're right. It won't be an issue." Hermione nodded, and internally he sighed. After two years he found possibly the one catgirl his age who did not want to get in his pants, and instead she thought _he_ was the pervert.

Maybe wizard magic really was real because if so, this was starting to feel like a curse.

* * *

 **If you were wondering why I made giant weasels/ferrets the main mode of transportation in this world, now you know.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	11. Diagon Alley

**Um the Muse:** I have no plans for doll-wielding mages in this story. The classes here are primarily based off jobs from Final Fantasy V and Bravely Default, and Lulu's methodology was only in FFX. It might be something I consider if this story does well enough for me to contemplate a sequel, but not this one.

 **Acerman:** Will we see the Japanese students again? Who knows? I don't think standing at the epicenter of an earth-shattering magical catastrophe would be good for their health, though.

* * *

 **Chapter 11  
** **Diagon Alley**

Two days later saw the four Adventurers slow their mounts to a walk in front of a small circle of buildings. None of the buildings was impressively large or ostentatious; in fact, the most interesting aspect of this little village was that their only apparent defense was a low picket fence surrounding the town that would at most deter any monsters that casually wandered over. "This is what you want to show us?" Harry asked after looking over their apparent destination.

Draco – "You might as well call me by my first name," the blond had told them after they set up camp the previous night – nodded and pushed up his floppy hat. "Welcome to New Diagon. It isn't the most impressive or most important part, but it is the entrance. We'll see a couple of people here first before moving on to our real destination. I need to offload everything that was reclaimed from the manor, after all."

Hermione gave the town another, longer look. "It doesn't look like the people here would have the space to put everything, let alone the money." Privately, Harry had to agree with her. The tiny village of Scunth looked nicer than this.

"They aren't the buyers. I'll actually wind up spending more money here," Draco explained with a small scowl. "Our next stop, I'll finally make it back."

He led them toward the opposite side of the town, and Dudley pushed himself higher on the albino mustid. "Maybe there would be enough people to buy everything. That's a lot of carts."

Following the direction of his cousin's gaze, Harry frowned at the view presented. Clumped together in front of a wooden gate was a large number of carts and carriages, enough for a few dozen people assuming each one held four people. What really caught his eye, though, was that for all those carts, there was not a mustid or bison in sight. How had the carts even gotten here? "Are those normally there?"

"No. No, they're not."

The wizard Sorcerer finally came to a stop next to the cart closest to the gate and hopped off to tie his mustid to one of the fence posts. Undoing some straps to pull a roll of cloth off his mount's saddle, he waved for them to follow. "Let's go inside. One of the people who live here should know more about just what's going on."

They passed through the gate, and Harry blinked in surprise when the innocuous sounds he would expect from a small village were suddenly audible. It was no wonder now why the town had put him on edge; without sound, it seemed like it was completely abandoned, but with it the village seemed much more normal. Draco led them down the circular street to a house they had not seen on the way over. A young man stood outside with a metal pole in his hand, the end of which was stuck inside a stone box. "Fergus!" Draco called out, getting the man's attention. "Is Brutus around?"

"Aye." Fergus slid part of the box open and pulled out the pole. The end was covered in a brightly glowing sludge, and he sat on a nearby stool to blow into the pipe. The glowing bit of what could only be molten glass quickly expanded. "He's in the house," the now-obvious gaffer continued. "I don't think grandpa's busy with anyone else right now, but somebody might have snuck past me."

The inside of the house was much cooler than outside, more than could be explained by just the shade or the contrast with the furnace where Fergus was working. More interesting than the temperature, however, were the lights attached to the walls. They were not candles or torches or lanterns. Each light was a solid sphere of glowing white, almost as if the owners of this house had caught gigantic fireflies and trapped them on the walls.

" _Lumos_ spells," explained Draco when he caught the three of them staring at the walls. "It's a fairly basic spell, and one that still works around here. There are a lot more impressive things to see than that."

"They may be more impressive, but this would be super useful," Dudley argued.

The wizard gave that a thoughtful nod and continued down the hall. "Brutus," he said in greeting, and the three other Adventurers looked around him as best they could. The man he had spoken to looked to be of at most middling age, far too young to be the grandfather of any but the youngest children. It certainly did not make sense for Fergus, who appeared to be older than any of the four of them, to call him 'grandpa'. As though to confirm that they had wandered down the rabbit hole, the man was also wearing what they could only guess was a thick bathrobe. Draco walked closer and exchanged a handshake with the man. "How's business been going?"

A deep frown twisted the man's expression. "Slow," he finally said. "A lot slower than it's been in a good long while. I hope it's just because other people have decided to join in and are giving me competition, but…"

While Draco nodded, Harry exchanged confused glances with Dudley and Hermione. This wizard _wanted_ competition? In what world did that make sense?

Brutus opened a door and waved them inside. The room beyond was practically empty aside from a few glass jars and an elaborate carving on the floor. It was two circles sitting nearly side by side, one larger than the other. Both circles had shapes and letters within them, and an 'x' merged into each circle to join them into a single coherent design. Altogether, it certainly _looked_ magical enough.

Draco unrolled and unfolded the cloth in the corner, and it quickly became obvious that it was a one-person tent. Was he planning to sleep here or something? While he fiddled with the poles, Brutus shook his head and pulled a slim stick from his belt. "Are you a wizard or not? _Erecto_."

The cloth quivered for a moment before stilling again.

Brutus glared at the twig in his hand, and a second look revealed that it was an Earth wand like those Draco had hired them to find in his family's manor. "Very few of us can still consider ourselves wizards," the blond said, not looking at the man. Harry walked over to help him pitch the tent, and when it was up Draco pulled open the flap.

The inside of the tent was enormous. An entire inn could have fit inside! The floor space was covered with chairs and couches and statues, and smaller objects were piled on top of them. "It's been about six months or so since I was last here," Draco explained, looking embarrassed at the mess that was now revealed. "You can collect a lot of knick-knacks in that long a time. And once the magic is pulled out of these things, it won't last long. I'd rather not travel back and forth to the castle all the time if I don't have to."

Draco, Dudley, and Harry grabbed one of the sofas and carried it out of the tent and onto the larger circle at Brutus's behest. He in turn picked up a large glass jar from a different corner of the room and manhandled it into the smaller circle. Once they were out of circle, the man bent down and placed both hands on the outside edge. A brilliant light poured from the tips of his fingers into the carving, the light splintering as it spread into the different parts of the design that revealed themselves all to be connected.

"What is he doing?" asked Hermione in a low voice that would not carry to the older wizard.

"Ritual magic. It was rare to see on Earth because wands were so convenient, but here on Gaia it's one of the very few kinds of magic that works consistently."

The glow had filled the entire carving on the floor while they were talking, and small wisps of iridescent smoke started to waft off the couch. The smoke was pulled towards the jar like iron to a magnet. Something bent the smoke's course to a single point just above the center of the 'x'. When the first edge of the smoke touched it, a narrow beam of white light lanced outwards and into the jar, causing it to shine from within.

The colorful smoke was taking more than just magic with it. As more and more leaked out of the sofa, Harry saw the rich fabric fade away to a dull brown. The wood creaked and twisted to the point that it nearly collapsed on itself. By the time the magic had been sucked away, all that was left was a near-colorless lump of uncertain material.

Dudley tilted his head. "Is that thing good for anything anymore, or is it just rubbish at this point?"

"We use it to make charcoal for the furnaces and some cooking, but that's about all it's good for now." Brutus grabbed a tool that looked like a three-pronged metal rake and dragged the lump out of the ritual space. "That whole tent full? I'll need to call my boys in to help."

"Take whatever time you need," Draco told him. "Out of curiosity, we saw a bunch of carts in front of the gate. What's going on?"

"Oh. That." Brutus snorted. "Ole Tom decided to call a bunch of numbskulls here to see about grabbing some stuff from the Alley. Didn't work last time he tried it, but I guess he thought that maybe it would work better this time around. I heard he called in some people who went out and learned that Muggle magic to see if that would do the trick." The wizard shook his head. "Can't see the sense in that myself. The Alley is too dangerous for full-grown wizards; I doubt a few tricks even Muggles can do are going to make much of a difference."

"Yes, what good could they do?" Draco echoed, a blank expression covering his face like a mask. "We'll let you finish this up. I'll check back in a couple of hours to see how far you've gotten." The blond's cape rustled as he whirled around and walked off.

The trio followed after him and found the Sorcerer standing outside, a hard sneer firmly focused on nothing in particular. "I apologize about that," he said after a few minutes to school his emotions. "It was rude of me to leave you in there by yourselves."

"It was a house. We'd be terrible Adventurers if we could get stuck in one of those," Dudley told him, trying and failing to lighten the mood. "I'm more worried about why you stormed off in the first place."

"An old issue, one I should have grown past already. It's of no importance." Shaking his head, he waved for the rest to follow. "Since we're already here and with nothing better to do, let us check out just what Tom is up to."

The short walk was apparently not enough for Hermione to keep her curiosity to herself any longer. "I think I understand what is going on so far. You have been collecting objects that were enchanted before the Transition, and you hire Brutus to draw the magic out and into the jars. But what do you do with the jars?"

"Mostly use them to keep other, more important pieces of Earth magic going. For example, towns use walls to keep monsters out, right?" Harry nodded with the rest of the party at Draco's question. "Wizarding settlements and houses use wards to do something similar. We had wards on Earth, too, and they were extremely reliable. They didn't even need anyone to keep them going. They pulled magic right out of the ground to fuel themselves.

"Unfortunately, the magic here on Gaia is completely different than on Earth. Wards can't draw on it, and without any way to replenish themselves they naturally started fading away. What's worse, it seems that Gaian magic is actually damaging to Earth magic, so the wards aren't just slowly failing. They are constantly and actively being attacked just by existing on this world. The magic to keep them intact has to come from somewhere, and the best source of Earth magic is things like what you found in the manor."

"Is that why Brutus said he hoped he had competition?" asked Harry. From an economic standpoint, competition was something no one ever wanted, but if he looked at it from a more humanitarian angle…

"More or less. If there is competition, his old business may just be being taken by someone else. If there isn't? That means there are even fewer things left for him to disenchant than I thought." Draco pointed at the building in the center where they were headed. "That is what Tom is probably hoping to accomplish today. The Alley is full of valuable Earth magic. It's just also incredibly dangerous to step foot in because of all the monsters. They didn't find their way in," he continued, looking back at the group. "Just like in my old home, they actually appeared there without any warning during the Transition. And, if the stories I've heard are correct, they are a lot stronger than the undead you dealt with."

That was anything but comforting, Harry decided as they entered the building. The interior looked like a fairly typical pub or inn, no different than any other in the world with the exception of its occupants. Many of them wore strange robes just as Brutus did, and only a very small number had any kind of armor on. None of them, not a one, was dressed as was typical for an Adventurer.

He did not want to pass judgement prematurely as had already been done today against them, but if any of them were experienced in Gaian fighting and magic, he would lay down his sword and become a Bard.

A heavily wrinkled man stepped out from behind the bar and gave everyone a look. Tom, Harry had to assume. "Are we still waiting for anyone?"

"That dolt Lockhart said he wanted to come, but it wouldn't do any good waiting even if he really was gonna show," one woman called out.

Tom moved to a door at the far end of the room. It was thick and made of a dark wood, with three horizontal bars making completely sure it could not be opened from the other side. Harry took a quick glance around in confusion; if he was not totally wrong, there was no where for that door to go but outside. "Thank you all for coming," Tom said, calling his attention back to the group. "I know it's been a long time since we've done anything like this. I don't have much money, so almost everything you can find in the Alley, you can keep."

The assembled wizards muttered to themselves at that, and understandably so. Considering how much Draco was willing to spend to collect things, someone who got extremely lucky could have a very profitable day.

"What I need, and the only reason I'm willing to open this door, is certain potions from one of the apothecaries." Tom held up four fingers. "Pepperup Potion, Fever Reducer, Wiggenweld Potion, and Nutrient Solution. I will pay ten sickles for every bottle of any of those you bring back.

"Because it's so dangerous, I can only keep the door open for an hour. I'll ring a bell when I'm about to close it. You need to get back here before then."

Tom waved a couple of young men over, and together they started struggling with the first crossbeam.

"What's a sickle?" Harry asked their local expert.

"It's one of the denominations of money we used to use on Earth. Knuts, sickles, and galleons. Don't ask for any kind of conversion rate to dimma," Draco warned before he could do that exact thing. "Wizards are the only ones who use it, and by and large they refuse to change over to dimma. The only way you'd be able to convert it is by buying something with it and then selling it again."

"I'm more curious what those potions are for," chimed in Hermione.

Draco nodded. "That's what's bothering me, too. Fever Reducer is exactly what it sounds like. Pepperup is good for colds and things. Wiggenweld gives a boost to the body's natural healing process. Nutrient Solution is something you can drink if you haven't been able to eat for a while. Put them all together, and it sounds like potions to use if someone was extremely sick and the Healers couldn't figure out what was wrong with them."

That struck a nerve in the Stellis, no great surprise considering she had joined Harry and Dudley for essentially the same reason. "We have to get out there and find those potions."

"We really don't. I don't know where the apothecary is, and we only have an hour to look. We would be better off searching the nearby buildings for—" Draco made the mistake of looking backwards and meeting Hermione's stern stare. A quick moment passed before he turned away. "…Fine, we'll look for the bloody apothecary."

Tom and his underlings moved the last brace, and he pulled the door open. What as revealed as not the street they had walked to get here or even another room, but a small cobblestone space with an arch. Through the arch an entirely new street was visible, one with strange and crooked buildings on either side. The wizards did not appear surprised and started moving as soon as the door was open.

Harry, on the other hand, had to shake himself a bit before falling into step behind Draco.

The view was even more alien once they were all through the arch. He could not recall ever seeing colors this eye-searingly bright, and even the Sorcerer was blinking rapidly. "What the hell is this?" Harry asked.

"This? This is – or was – the biggest shopping area in Wizarding Britain." Draco swung his arms around to encompass its impossible size. "Welcome to Diagon Alley."

Instead of being impressed, Dudley looked green. "Are all wizard buildings so weird?"

The slightly smug expression on Draco's face fell, and his arms dropped to his sides. "No, they aren't. Or they weren't? Do you remember how strange the inside of the manor was when you went into it? That's what happens when large concentrations of Earth magic interact with Gaia's magic. They _twist_ each other in ways no one can predict or stop, and this is the result. A place that just doesn't feel _right_."

"That's why Underhills are so rare," whispered Hermione. "There were only so many wizard locations for them to form from."

"And why keeping wards up is so important. They don't just keep monsters away. They protect little pockets of almost-Earth. When they fail, there is nothing to stop another Underhill from forming."

"Is there anything of Earth magic Gaia doesn't ruin?" Harry asked.

His question was mostly facetious, but Draco shook his head. "No. Not even wands. It used to be that a wizard would carry the same wand his whole life, but now each one only holds so much magic, so many spells. The more you use it, the fewer you have until you run out completely. And, just to rub salt in the wound, a used-up wand transforms itself into the Sorcerer wands you are familiar with."

Earth wands would transform? Harry's eyes drifted to the cane Draco carried, the cane he had revealed was really the wand he needed to cast Gaian magic. Could it also be the wand he used when he was learning Earth magic?

Draco switched his cane from one hand to the other and moved it out of sight. "Shall we carry on? I don't remember where the apothecary is, and we only have an hour to look. Less, actually."

"Are there wands here we could grab for you?" offered Dudley.

That startled a laugh out of the wizard. "I'm sure there are. We aren't even going to try that. I heard all about the few attempts that were made to raid Ollivander's old wand shop. Almost no one survived. An incredibly powerful monster took root inside, and it would take a miracle to kill it. Miracles are not something I keep in my pocket."

The wizards, not being as preoccupied with explanations the way the Adventurers were, had already spread out through the alley. Some of them were breaking into the closest buildings while others, presumably those with knowledge of how the shops used to be arranged, had gone further down the street to begin their search. Considering how the Transitioned had changed Draco's family home, that was an assumption with little support. With no obvious answer, they looked around before Dudley finally suggested, "Let's just pick one at random."

Harry shrugged and followed after his cousin, and the other Adventurers fell into step behind him. Dudley took one overhead swing at the handle to break the door open and stepped just past the threshold. "Is it supposed to be this dark— Whoa!"

The floor beneath Dudley's feet crumbled and collapsed to reveal a pitch-black void. Dudley plummeted down into the hole, and without a second's hesitation Harry jumped after him.

Through the darkness they fell until the floor raced up to meet them. They slammed into it and bounced off the spongy surface only to land again. Harry lay still for a moment to catch his breath when something else fell, and two grunts caused him to look over and snicker. Hermione glared back at him and rolled out of Dudley's lap; the Knight, on the other hand, curled up in a fetal position holding his delicate bits and moaning. "I'm not that heavy," she bit out.

"You're no featherweight, either."

That made three of them, with one conspicuous absence. "Did Draco run off to get help?" he asked as he stood up. Immediately afterwards, he heard something else coming from above them.

"—aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAH!"

The caped wizard hit the ground hard and rolled for several feet until he came to a stop at Harry's feet. "I hate you all," he grumbled into the ground.

"No one forced you to jump down after us," Harry reminded Draco. Offering his hand, he pulled the other man to his feet. "Dudley, you okay down there?"

"Just leave me here to die."

Rolling his eyes, Harry helped his cousin up as well. "Quit being so melodramatic. We need to get out of here."

"That seems simple enough." He looked over to find Hermione fiddling with a door set into the wall. "There's only one door here. Which probably means it won't be anywhere near that easy."

"Let's not tempt fate, please," he warned.

The lock clicked, and Hermione kicked the door open and stood to the side to draw her bow. It was no surprise she did not want to take the lead; she was an archer, and they worked best farther back. Instead it was Harry who walked through first, his blade bared in front of him. The room beyond was much brighter lit than where they landed, even though the diffuse glow had been welcome after the fall through utter black. Here, however, torches were set at regular intervals to cast light on the bookshelves that filled the space. Each shelf was packed with books and tomes. If it were not for the drop, this would be a bookworm's paradise.

Something shuffled from down one stack, and Harry raised his rapier higher. Of course they would not be alone. What was down here was a surprise, though. Around the corner came a tall, thin figure all in an off-white. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. It looked like a guard or a knight, but made entirely from paper. Its armor, its helmet, even its arms and legs were all made from the same material. The only bit that was not paper was the large feather it had pierced through its left hand.

He expected the knight to rush at him now that they were visible to each other, but it ignored him and walked down a different aisle.

"What was that?" he asked to no one in particular.

"Maybe it can't deviate from its patrol route?" suggested Hermione. "Or maybe its vision is so bad it can only see us if we are directly in front of it. I'd rather not experiment to find out."

"I don't think it can hurt us that bad. It's made of paper, and the only weapon it had was a feather."

"Have you ever heard the proverb, _'the pen is mightier than the sword_ '?" He nodded, and she continued, "I would not be shocked if it took that phrase in a very literal direction."

"So we don't fight it." Dudley nudged his way past them and pointed at the bookshelves. "Those things don't reach all the way up. If we climbed them, we'd have room to move around but could still stay out of that thing's way. Particularly if there are more than one of them."

That was a plan everyone could get behind, and they ran at the nearest bookcase and climbed up the shelves like rungs on a ladder. The books did not leave much room for their feet to find purchase, but it was enough to make it to the top. Looking at the rest of the room from their vantage point, Harry whistled faintly. The room was huge, and more importantly the bookcases were not arranged in a nice, orderly manner. No, they made up the walls of a literal maze, and even from here he could see more paper knights patrolling the paths.

"Well, Dud, when you're right, you're right."

The compliment puffed up Dudley's ego the slightest bit, and the Knight proudly took point as they navigated the maze from overhead rather than within.

In the middle of the room, the maze broke apart into two pieces, and the Adventurers stopped to watch knights and origami tigers drift between the two halves. "Any idea how we're going to get across that?" Harry asked the group. "I'd rather not try to fight them all at once. It would be too easy for them to surround us."

Hermione glanced around them and shook her head. "I don't see anything we could climb over with. No chandeliers, no ledges."

"Any wizardy ideas?" Dudley asked, his eyes moving to Draco.

Draco shook his head. "I can't create a bridge or something for us. Transfiguration was never my strong suit even before… Anyway, no." His eyes narrowed, and he looked back and forth across the gap. "Although…"

"Even a dumb idea is better than what we have right now," Harry reminded him.

"This might count as a dumb idea, all right, but let's give it a go." Draco aimed the ball of his cane at Harry and made a swirling motion with his off-hand. It looked almost as though he were trying to cast a Wind spell, which was impossible. Only Clerics and Fencers could use that spell line. "Float."

A gentle breeze buffeted Harry from below, and he looked down to find his feet were no longer on the top of the bookcase. Instead he was hovering a few inches above it. "What is this?"

"It's Float. That isn't the name it has in the Wizarding World, but it also isn't supposed to work quite like this, either. So I guess it's a spell of my own invention?" Draco pondered that for a moment before shaking his head. "Regardless, this might help us get across."

"I know I said it when we were escaping Whinging Village, but it would have been so helpful for us to have met you a couple of years ago. I can definitely see the utility of wizard magic."

"You should be able to do it, too." Harry shook his head, but Draco continued nonetheless, "Your parents were a witch and a wizard, just like mine. There is magic running through your veins, _just like mine_. You would have a lot to catch up on, but give you a wand and there is no reason you couldn't learn to use it. It would be nice to have someone else to help me figure out how to cast old spells as Gaian magic.

"But first, let's get out of here. We won't have to worry about the future if we die today."

The Float spell did not let them fly, per se, but neither were they walking on air. It was something in between, single steps followed by drifting. Draco had to keep the spell going while they were under its effect, so they wasted no time in crossing the gap. The wizard himself was the last to cross, his own path more wobbly than theirs as he had to split his focus between his movements and the spell. Only when they were together again did they continue on through the maze.

The door that stood at the opposite end of the room from where they entered was a welcome sight, and Dudley shoved it open to reveal the street they had come from. "Did we just walk in a circle or something?" he asked, looking as confused as Harry felt. He was quite sure they had not moved upwards at all, and they had started this bit of exploration with a tremendous drop.

A bell rang in the distance, and Draco shoved them out of the way. "We need to go! That's the bell Tom said he would ring before he closed the door!"

"How?" demanded Hermione as they all sprinted back towards the inn. "We were only in there for twenty minutes, tops!"

"That's part of what makes this place so dangerous. Diagon Alley isn't a single Underhill like the manor. Each shop is its own Underhill as well. Time and space are totally unpredictable here."

The arch that led into the shopping district soon came into view, and Tom gestured at them to move faster. "Get in, get in! Some idiot riled up the monster in Ollivander's! I have to shut the door now!"

That eked out more speed from Draco, and the rest of them did their best to keep up. The door shut as soon as they slipped inside.

Harry panted faintly and watched the men from before move the bars back into position. "We got trapped in one of the stores," he explained to the innkeeper. "We never even found the apothecary."

Tom's shoulders fell. "Neither did anyone else. I don't know that they were even seriously looking for it, not with some of the things they were carrying out."

No one else went looking for the things Tom wanted? He shook his head, and from beside him he heard Draco mutter, "I told you. Everyone else had the same thought I did: this was an opportunity to look for things they wanted or that they could make more money from."

"What did you want the potions for?" Hermione asked.

"It doesn't really matter now, does it?" Tom said in reply, his sad gaze moving upwards to something only he could see. "It doesn't matter to anyone."

* * *

 **I did my residency in a town whose neighbor was well known for their glasswork, and they regularly put on demonstrations of glassblowing and sculpting. I'm happy to get away, mostly because the "culture" of the hospital where I had to work was shit, but you could consider the use of glass in this chapter as an homage to that area in general.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	12. The Castle

**merendinoemiliano:** My questions about your pairing preference aside, I can tell you that I do not plan to spend any special effort in making Ron an asshat. As for the classes, I thought about letting the characters do a class–subclass combination as seen in FFV and Bravely Default, but I packed enough tricks into the different classes that it became more trouble than it was worth.

 **Zelavian:** The Transition itself did not kill anyone. Now, there were quite a few people who died in the following days and weeks, mostly from monsters they did not know how to deal with, but exactly how many is unknown. What is known is that the already small population of the Wizarding World has dwindled even more over these ten years.

* * *

 **Chapter 12  
** **The Castle**

Waking with the sun pouring its light through the window, Harry tossed and turned for several minutes more before giving up further rest as a pipe dream. Dudley's snores added insult to injury. He gave the Knight a glare, then grabbed the dirty rag that he had used to oil his blade the night before and draped it over his cousin's face. It would not teach him a lesson, but it made him feel better nonetheless.

He was surprised to find that despite rising with the sun, he still was not the first of their little group up. Draco sat at the bar of the pub and inn where they chose to spend the night, a steaming cup of tea sitting untouched in front of him. "Morning," Harry said in greeting.

A short nod was the only response he got.

Even knowing Draco only a few days, he still found that silent answer strange. Draco had proven over the course of the journey here that he was in love with the sound of his own voice, talking about anything and everything that crossed his mind. From dawn till dusk he would chatter if given the opportunity. "Something on your mind?"

The Sorcerer scoffed softly, a small smile nonetheless playing on his face. "Just preparing myself for the day ahead of us."

"Does it have to do with the reason you wanted to wait until today to leave for wherever it is we're going?" After finishing their jaunt to the Underhill the day before, they needed to wait only a couple of hours more for Brutus to finishing draining the magic out of all the things Draco brought him. The blond had claimed that they were on a time limit to get the dozens of glass jars from New Diagon to the mysterious castle he had mentioned before, but almost immediately afterwards he recommended they spend the night in the village rather than take advantage of the few hours of daylight left to them. Dudley and Hermione had thought the change in priorities strange, too, though none of them had any good guesses about the cause.

"More or less. I hate going back there," Draco admitted. "Every time I go back, I think to myself how nice it would be for it to be the last time. Now, though, with how difficult it has become to find things to disenchant? It very well might be the last time for real."

"Why do you hate going back there?" Harry asked quietly. He could understand the sentiment; all three of them could, since he and Dudley had chosen Adventuring to escape Whinging Village and Hermione had done the same to run away from the Riverlands. He simply did not expect Draco to be in the same shoes as the rest of them. "Aren't they your people?"

" _Our_ people. You're a wizard too, Harry, even if you know nothing about that world. But the sad thing is that I almost envy you for that," Draco continued. "You shouldn't expect a warm welcome when we get there. I think you picked up on it yesterday, but 'Muggle magic' isn't exactly held in high esteem. Most people see it as inferior to Earth magic and never give it another thought. The few who don't almost to a one see it instead as a threat, believing that Gaian magic and its practitioners – us – seek to overthrow the 'natural order of things'.

"Then there's the issue of Hermione. Back on Earth, there were several non-human races, and none of them were what you'd call well-respected in society. They were different, so they were shunned because they weren't human enough. Except you also have Muggles who were and are looked down on as well because they don't have magic. So Hermione and Dudley, assuming it comes out he isn't a wizard himself, are both going to be treated like they're vermin for both not being wizards and using Gaian magic. You and I will only have to deal with the latter."

Draco frowned and thought for a moment. "You know, I might not have thought this through."

"If you're trying to sell the idea of staying in this place when the job's done, you're doing a bang up job," Harry said with no little sarcasm. This did not sound like a pleasant place to visit. If anything, it sounded more and more like Whinging Village writ large.

"I'm not trying to sell anything. I hate going there, remember?" Draco took a long drink of his tea. "What I want is for you, Dudley, and Hermione to go in there with your eyes open. Less chance you'll be unpleasantly surprised that way."

* * *

Draco's words still lingered in the back of Harry's mind when the quartet left the inn and made their way to yet another building nearby. At first glance it looked like an outhouse, which raised more questions in their minds than any of them were comfortable with.

"I, er, don't think we'll all fit inside," Dudley said after several seconds staring at the door.

"We can make room. We'll just have to get real friendly with each other." Draco opened the door to reveal a room far larger than the outside could contain, the effect nearly identical to that of the tent he used to store all the magical knick-knacks he had collected. The wizard gave Dudley an unimpressed look. "Or maybe there will be plenty of space. Rule number one of dealing with Earth magic: never trust your eyes. Nothing and no one is what it seems."

Despite that warning, Harry could not help but trust what his eyes were telling him about the room they found themselves in. The enlarged space was nearly wasted, for it housed only a single device: a stone disc on a pedestal, a glowing golden crystal floating in the air above the disc with four plates of the same material at the compass points. A second look around verified that he has not simply missed something lurking in the shadows. It was an… interesting piece of art, but nothing he would give a second look. "This is how we are going to that castle of yours, isn't it?" he guessed.

"Now you're getting it," praised Draco. "Everybody put a hand on the pedestal."

The other Adventures looked at each other and shrugged. It was not as if they understood what was going on in the first place. Once they were all touching the disc, Draco touched the end of his cane to the floating crystal. "Hogwarts."

The disc grew warm beneath Harry's hands, then burning hot. He tried to yank his hand away, but it remained stubbornly attached as though it had melted onto the stone surface. A moment later his coat and then the rest of him started floating. The effect was not entirely dissimilar to what happened when Draco used that Float spell on them during the raid on Diagon Alley, just far, far stronger. "Are were going to fly there or some—"

His words caught in his throat because the disc went from still to spinning at impossible speeds without a second's warning. His feet flew out behind him as though it desperately wanted to fling him at the walls, and now he was grateful for how tightly his fingers were bonded to this miserable contraption. Thankfully the sudden wind also worked to cool the surface so he would not have to spend the entire trip – however long it was going to be – in pain.

That was the only good part about this whole thing.

The first few minutes of the trip Harry spent more nauseous than he ever imagined a person coil could feel. For the rest he was in a state of numbness that he could only guess was his body's way of protecting him from the vertigo assaulting him. An indeterminate time later, the accursed spinning stopped as abruptly as it began, and he flopped to the ground with a sigh of relief. "I'm not riding that thing again," he muttered into the wonderfully motionless dirt. "I'm not. I'll walk back to the village if I have to."

A short distance away, Dudley and Hermione muttered their agreement with that sentiment.

"Warp stones aren't comfortable, I know," Draco said, earning sulfurous looks from all three of his companions. "From the old stories, they combine the inconvenience of the Floo network with the horrors of a portkey. Nothing wizards have ever come up with for travel has ever been fun to use. I don't like it any more than you do, but there's no other way to get to Hogwarts. Not unless someone has figured out how to fly without telling me."

Slowly and reluctantly pushing himself to his feet, Harry followed the Sorcerer's gaze and stared. Even still feeling ill, he was amazed. It was gorgeous.

The castle named Hogwarts was not a free-standing building the way he had assumed. It was built directly into the side of a large mountain, different sections of the walls and towers poking out through the rock only to dive back in farther up. Not was it built in a strictly vertical manner. Harry had never considered himself a connoisseur of abnormal architecture, but the way the towers spread out almost like an ultros's tentacles was fascinating. If he ever stopped adventuring and settled down, he was building a home like this.

"Good heavens, that's hideous," his philistine of a cousin chimed in.

"It's not for everyone," Draco noncommittally. "Come on. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can finish our business and leave."

A narrow trail led from the small clearing they found themselves in to a paddock filled with a herd of strange creatures. They looked almost like stretched-out bison, tall and skeletal thin, but with hairless black hide stretched over their long legs. Odder still, each one had a pair of tattered wings like a bomb's coming out of each shoulder. They turned milky eyes to the group before returning their attention back to the chunks of raw meat inside several troughs sitting in the ground.

"Thestrals. Winged horses," the wizard continued when they all looked blankly at him. "They might be the only kind of horse left in the world. No one knows how they managed to survive the journey to this world when so many other species didn't, but somehow they did. They're one of only… four?… yes, four magical species besides humans anyone has seen in this world, and sadly the most useful. Otherwise it's just doxies, bundimuns, and what might be flobberworms or might be giant earthworms. No one's really sure about that last one. Anyway, the thestrals are our ride to the castle."

"We have to ride one of these?" Harry asked, giving the strange creatures the evil eye. "They don't look... safe. Why don't wizards use mustids like normal people?"

"You thought the people in that village you used to live in rejected this world? They have nothing on wizards. They'll do anything to hold onto even the smallest scraps of Earth. Unless it interferes with their standard of living and comfort, of course, then all bets are off."

The disgust and anger in the blond's voice was a shock to hear. Harry was quite done with unpleasant shocks today.

"I'm not riding that thing," Hermione said with finality. She reached out with her left hand and focused. Nothing happened, and she blinked. "What? Why can't I summon my gryphon?"

Draco shook his head. "I have no idea. I wouldn't even know where to start guessing. I don't have an Eidolon to summon in the first place, and I don't know any wizard who knows more about Gaian magic than I do. Maybe it's the wards? They are being used to try to keep Gaian magic out, and while they don't do a perfect job, maybe it's enough to interfere with your brand? I don't know enough even to hazard a guess."

The Stellis gave the nearest thestral a suspicious look. It in turn merely turned its creepy blank eyes to stare at her. "I'm officially unhappy about this. Just want everyone to know that."

"Your objection is noted and ignored," Draco told her, no trace of sympathy in his voice. He walked over to one of the thestrals and pulled himself onto its back. "Come on. We're wasting daylight."

All of them eventually climbed onto their unusual mounts. Draco let out a shrill whistle that made the ears of Harry's thestral perk up. Without prompting it started walking to follow the lead creature, and he had little choice but to sit back and enjoy the ride as much as he could. Not that it was that comfortable of a ride, to be honest; compared to a mustid, this monstrosity was too thin and too bony for his tastes. Thankfully it was short ride, and soon enough they arrived at the doors leading into the castle.

"Do we need to tell someone to put the thestrals back in their paddock?" he asked as he looked around for something he could use to tie the creature to or with.

"They'll wander back on their own. They're self-sufficient like that. Unlike some people I could name."

Harry blinked and looked harder at the Sorcerer. The steadily rising coldness in the blond's voice was disconcerting at the very least. It also confirmed something he had suspected since their conversation earlier that morning: Draco hated this place just as much as he hated Whinging Village. "We don't have to be here if you don't want to, you know," he said, earning him strange looks from Hermione and Dudley that he ignored. His attention was solely focused on Draco. "We can just leave and come back later. Or we don't have to come back at all. If they are anything like the people we grew up with, you don't owe them anything."

"I wish it were that simple," Draco murmured. He looked up at Harry and continued, "Not that I'm not grateful for the sentiment. I just want to get this over with."

Inside the castle, Harry had to force himself not to stop and stare at everything on display. Where he was expecting large expanses of bare cold stone, what he instead found was a treasure trove of exquisite tapestries and more of the moving portraits they had run into when raising Draco's family home. Hermione, he saw with a quick glance at his companions, was likewise impressed. Only Draco, who had seen all this before, and Dudley were unmoved by the decor. Taking one of the many corridors visible just inside the door, the wizard guided them down a twisty path that ended in front of an ugly gargoyle.

"Are we lost?" asked Hermione.

"No, we're right where we want to be. Licorice wands."

At Draco's odd command, the gargoyle started flying. Or not flying, Harry realized after an astonished moment, but riding into the air on top of a spiraling staircase. Draco waved for them to follow him and started climbing the stairs. With nowhere else to go but up, the other Adventures trailed along. At the top of the stairs stood a wooden door folded with gold filigree. Harry expected they would knock, but without another word Draco shoved the door open and walked in.

"You are so much like Severus was, my boy," a man's voice said. "People would be surprised to hear you are not related."

The owner of that voice turned around. _This_ was what Harry would have envisioned if asked to describe a wizard. He was an elderly man with long white hair and an equally long beard that had been tied into an elaborate braid, presumably to keep it out of the way of his food and books. Despite the age obvious in his hair and the wrinkles on his face, though, there were no hints of frailty in his frame, and the crooked nose made him look like someone who had been in too many bar fights when he was younger.

Harry did not know what kind of spells or potions wizards had access to that would keep them so healthy for so long, but he knew he was going to want them.

"It is good to see you again, though, Mister— My apologies, Draco." The man's eyes feel on the rest of the group, and if Harry was not already looking for some hint of a negative thanks to his and Draco's conversation, he was sure he would have missed the momentary flicker that passed through the clear blue eyes. "And you brought friends? How unusual. Do you plan to introduce us, or are you going to leave an old man in the dark?"

"Friends"—Draco was calling them what now?—"this is Albus Dumbledore, former headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and now the leader of what is essentially the last remaining stronghold of wizardkind. Mister Dumbledore, these are my traveling companions. First is Hermione of the Riverland Grange, an incredibly skilled archer and Hunter."

Hermione's ears perked up at the unexpected praise, and she gave the older man a short bow.

"Next is Dudley Dursley, a powerful Knight."

Dumbledore's eyes widened at that name, but they did not focus on Dudley. Instead they moved to Harry almost in expectation.

"And finally is our Fencer, Harry Potter."

"Dear Merlin, I don't know how I didn't see the resemblance sooner. You are near the spitting image of your father, Harry. We thought you were lost with so many others of our people. Draco, you have done our world a great service today."

"I didn't bring them here so you could gawk at them," Draco snapped. "I'm here with mana jars from Brutus."

"Always so quick to get down to business without spending any times on pleasantries with an old man. I know your parents taught you better than that." That rebuke did nothing but harden Draco's expression, and after a long moment Dumbledore sighed. "My apologies again. I did not mean to bring up painful memories."

"Of course you didn't." Draco's tone was at odds with his words, but he reached into the satchel at his side and pulled out a small burlap sack. "Thirty large jars, and another five small jars. A thousand dimma for each large, and seven hundred together for the smalls."

Harry stared at the Sorcerer when he threw those numbers out. No wonder Draco said finding enchanted objects was profitable! Dumbledore, on the other hand, winced. "That is highway robbery, and you know it."

"Sure it is. I'm also the only game in town. If you don't want them, I can walk outside and pop the jars open—"

"Now, now, Draco," Dumbledore said quickly. "There's no need to be hasty. I'm sure an arrangement could be made. I will be happy to pay your normal rate of six hundred per large and fifty per small jar, and once more I truly am sorry for what I said. It was a slip of the tongue, nothing more."

Draco looked like he wants to push back on the price, but he turned to look at the expressions on the other Adventures' faces. "Fine," he said when he looked back at Dumbledore. "Six hundred and fifty respectively."

That was still… eighteen thousand, two hundred and fifty? Harry thought he had done that math right. Even split four ways, it would be more than he and Dudley has ever earned off a single job before. Assuming Draco planned on splitting it in the first place, he remembered; he had, after all, already paid them for retrieving the items he had turned over to fill these jars. Whatever profit he made after that was his own to do with however he pleased.

Dumbledore did not appear any happier at the sum once he calculated it either, but nonetheless he pulled a thick ledger out from a drawer and flipped to somewhere in the middle. "I can give you just under eleven thousand today, and the rest in a couple of months. You know Hogwarts always pays her debts."

"Slowly, but yes," Draco agreed with obvious reluctance. He shrugged and pulled a rectangular box out of the satchel. "I guess you can't afford these then. Oh well."

"Are those…?"

Draco opened the box and held it open so Dumbledore could stare hungrily into it. "Four wands. Ten thousand dimma a piece."

Dudley nudged Harry, and he nodded. Draco had gotten _five_ wands out of the manor. Where was the last one?

"I can't afford it with the currency of this world," Dumbledore cautioned, "but that is not the same as not being able to afford them at all. Name your price, and I will get you that much in galleons—"

Draco closed the box with a loud snap. "I told you before, Dumbledore: galleons and sickles are worthless to me. I only deal in real money. You want to buy treasures with rubbish? Find a fool to do business with."

Dumbledore held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Just because Gringotts is gone does not make them worthless. I am sure the there is someone in this world who can melt them down and work with raw silver and gold."

"Many, which would only matter if the Wizarding World has not been duped by the goblins for centuries." Draco gave the old man a hard smile. "Your currency isn't gold or silver or even bronze. It's just rock that was glamoured to look like precious metals. I know. I had a smith try to melt them down into something useful, and all he got for his efforts was slag. Your scraps are nothing to me. Keep them, and I will keep the wands."

"No one else will buy them," Dumbledore reminded him. "As you said, Hogwarts and Diagon Alley are the only enclaves of the magical world left. Muggles can't use them, not even the users of the Muggle magic you are so enamored with. They are useless to anyone else."

"That sounds like it will be my problem, doesn't it? Let me handle my affairs, and I will stay out of yours. How many people are living here without a functional wand?" Draco added. "There can't be that many adults whose wands still work properly and can cast proper spells. To say nothing of all the children who can't learn magic. No wands, no potion ingredients, no magical creatures or plants from Earth; even the stars are different from the world we came from."

"You are a cruel man," Dumbledore scolded Draco with a frown.

"I consider myself practical." The box returned to the satchel, and Draco turned away from the old man standing behind his desk. "Sounds like we're done here."

"Wait! Wait." Draco put on an expression of mock surprise for the other Adventurers before smoothing his face and twisting around to meet Dumbledore's eyes. The old wizards tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him and sighed. "What if I could provide you with raw gold instead of Muggle currency?"

"I think if you had any to offer me, you would have brought it up before now."

"I don't have it at this moment, but that is not the same as being unable to acquire it." Draco tilted his head and waited for him to continue. "You should know this, but I was a student of the greatest alchemist of all time in my youth. I may not have a Philosopher's Stone, but there are other methods to produce precious metals. They are simply delicate and difficult. Give me a little time, and I can get enough to pay for the wands as well as what I still owe you for the jars."

"Three days. You have three days to gather four hundred ounces of pure gold."

Harry could not tell if Dumbledore was more surprised by the fact Draco agreed, by the amount of time he was given, or by how much gold he was expected to produce. The old wizard nodded regardless. "I can do that."

"Good. Because if you can't, I am leaving and taking the wands with me, and you will never see them again."

Draco stormed out the door and down the stairs, and the others looked at each other and raced after him. They found him leaning against the wall next to the gargoyle with his eyes closed. "Sorry you had to see that."

"Which part? You taking that guy to the cleaners?" Dudley asked with a snort.

Hermione glared at the Knight before looking back at Draco. "Please tell me there was a reason beyond simple greed for why you gave him such harsh terms."

"There was, though I don't know if you would like that reason any better than greed." Draco opened his eyes, and despite Harry's expectation there was no satisfaction to be found. The Sorcerer just looked tired. "There might have been some petty revenge involved."

"You would hurt a whole town to take revenge on one man?"

"No, but I will hurt a whole town to get revenge on that town, and hurt a man to get revenge on him. Dumbledore likes to find and push people's buttons, and I have unfortunately had enough dealings with him that he has learned several of mine. It might have served him well when he all but led a country, but here it is nothing more than a bad habit he is unwilling to break. I don't much enjoy being taunted about what my mother would think of my behavior or actions, so already I'm tempted to gouge him when it comes to the prices. Not to mention that every time he can't cover his entire bill – or more accurately, doesn't want to do so – he offers me some worthless trinket or old currency that no one outside of other wizards will accept. I think he intends to use it to pull me back into this world.

"I wish him luck with that one," Draco added. "I've dealt with enough rejection from 'proper wizards' that I have less than no intention of giving them any other opportunities. That plays into the revenge on the people within Hogwarts. For almost as long as I can remember, they mocked and belittle me because I was curious about the magic of this world. Even the mere idea that there might be something worth learning from other races or the Spires was met with laughter and, later, punishment. They resisted any sort of change even as the foundations of their society crumbled around them. Do you know how that changed when I started finding and bringing jars filled with magic to them so they could keep the wards and the other enchantments in this castle going? When I brought wands back from my travels so they could keep using the spells they had known their entire lives?"

Harry shook his head. They had no way to hazard even a guess, but Draco was not asking a real question. This feeling towards the society of his birth was clearly collecting inside him like a poison, and the only way to help him was to give him the opportunity to purge it from his heart and soul. "How did it change?"

"It _didn't_! My knowledge, my Mark, and my skills are the only reason this precious little bubble of theirs hasn't collapsed on them already, and I get not one peep of thanks or apology! I have them and their entire way of life in the palm of my hand, and they still treat me like shite!" Draco panted lightly after that outburst, and it took him several seconds to put himself back together. "I'm not asking for much. I don't want them to fall down at my feet and beg for forgiveness, though I certainly wouldn't turn it down from some people. I don't want to be made king of the wizards. I just want the respect that my actions – all for _their_ benefit, mind you – deserve. I don't think that's too much to ask."

"Is that also why you kept your old Earth wand after it transformed into a Gaia wand?" Harry asked. "As two fingers to the wizards?"

That question startled Draco, but after a moment he gave Harry a wry smile. "I suspected you figured that out yesterday. Yes, that's part of the reason. The other reason is that typical Gaia wands don't work with any kind of Earth spells, even those I've managed to adapt to this world's magic. It has to be an Earth wand. I'm sure there is some way to make a wand capable of it without waiting for an Earth wand to transform, but I have yet to figure it out."

"Question," Dudley said, distracting both of them. "If these people don't leave this castle, how does this Dumbledore guy have dimma to pay you with in the first place?"

"They can't be entirely isolated. If they were, how would Draco have learned about the Spires and Marks in the first place?" Hermione pointed out.

"You're actually both right. Most wizards have no interactions at all with the outside world, but a few go to New Diagon from time to time. Mostly I think it's for trade, like different kinds of food. They need dimma to buy anything. As for how they get it?" Draco shrugged. "I don't really know. I've long suspected Dumbledore has some way of getting money whenever he really needs it, though whether that's from extracting metals from the mountain or duplicating something to sell over and over or some other method entirely I couldn't tell you. It's another reason I could push him on how much he needs to buy the wands. I didn't expect him to admit to being able to make gold on demand, and I don't know if I even believe him about that. He might be using the alchemy excuse to blind me to how he really plans to get all that gold. There is just no telling with him."

"So we just have to sit around and wait for three days while he does whatever?" asked Dudley.

"I guess I did say I wouldn't leave until he had a chance to get the gold, didn't I?" Draco said with a wince. "Bugger me. You three don't have to stay here if you don't want to. The warp stone will take you back to Diagon, and I'll meet up with you there."

Harry shook his head and gripped Draco's shoulder with one hand. "After seeing how this place is affecting you, you will just have to put up with me sticking around."

"Where Harry goes, I go," Dudley said without hesitation.

Hermione blinked at him in confusion. "I can find plenty of things to look at and places to explore in a castle like this. You don't have to worry about me getting bored."

Draco did not seem to know what to say to the outpouring of support he received, and he swallowed a few times before he could speak in a normal voice. "Thank you. I know where there are some available rooms, for guests and the like. We can stay there. Let me show you the way, then I need an hour or so to take care of another errand."

"You don't want us to join you on that one?" Harry asked.

"No. I'd rather you didn't. This one is…" Draco grimaced. "…personal."

* * *

 **Yay, finally at Hogwarts. This should mark the roughly halfway point of the story, assuming my notes are accurate and my muse doesn't throw me some curveballs.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	13. Life in Hogwarts

**Impstar:** This story will be shorter, yes. Not everything has to be an epic saga like the Black Queen series. (Thankfully.) When I was planning the story, I was shooting for somewhere in the 80-110 thousand word mark. So a nice, normal-sized book. And I'm glad I don't plan for it to be longer, because the last several chapters have just been fighting me tooth and nail.

It doesn't help that I have two distinct but related plot bunnies just _ravaging_ my brain, and I know that if I stop to work on them before this story is complete, I'll never finish. Even if I might have seven pages of notes written out for one of them already. :-(

* * *

 **Chapter 13  
** **Life in Hogwarts**

Draco closed the door to the suite where he had essentially dropped off the other Adventurers and started down the corridor to one of the large halls that led to the grounds. If he were to be entirely honest with himself, he was not decided on what to make of the fact that all three of them had volunteered to stay at Hogwarts while he waited for Dumbledore to collect enough gold to settle his bill. He could not think of anything they could have heard about within Hogwarts and wanted to take for themselves – how could they, when none of them grew up in the Wizarding World? – so the only reason they had to stay was to keep him company.

That was… an unfamiliar feeling, being wanted, and not one he could say with confidence he had felt since his mother gave her life to save him.

He had dealt with any number of Adventurers since he struck out on his own two years ago, and none of them had ever offered to stand by his side for this long. Then again, the feeling was mutual; it was not as if he had ever offered to show any of his other temporary co-workers around New Diagon and Hogwarts. If this group had not contained Harry Potter, he could not say for sure that he would have made the offer to this group, either. He had just been so curious; here, for the first time, was another wizard who had sought out the magic of this world. What was he like? Where had he been for all these years?

To find that the beloved child of the old world had been raised among Muggles and chose Gaian magic because he knew of nothing else was a surprise. It left a host of questions in his mind, questions like whether Harry would have taken the same road had he been raised amongst other wizards or if he would be half as interesting were he just another wand-waver.

Questions that in all honesty he did not want the answers to.

Out on the grounds near the edge of the former Forbidden Forest stood rows and rows of houses. None of them were anywhere as grand as the manors that had once been the old families' showpieces, but they fulfilled their functions well enough. The castle was large enough that there were rooms available for nearly everyone who wished to live in the safety of Hogwarts without anyone being forced to build new properties on the outskirts, but that did not lend nearly the glamor of having a family home. If there was one thing the grand family lines prided themselves on, it was having enough opulence to choke a hippogriff.

Traveling down the lines of houses, he came to a subdivision that was far more familiar than any other. Even now in these times of drastic change, the Wizarding World could not let go of the divisions that had nearly ripped their society apart before Draco was born, when a terrifying man known only as the Dark Lord made empty promises to lead them into a golden age. Families of like minds on politics and magic clumped together, viewing all others with disdain and building walls to keep anyone 'lesser' from from right-minded wizards and witches.

An indescribable expression twisted his lips, part humor and part derision. Where he stood now, even fifteen years later, voicing such thoughts on politics of a lost world was an invitation to be cursed and left in the mud to crawl his way back to the castle.

A few turns led him to a house standing on a hill, and he climbed up the cobbled sidewalk to the door. Lifting his fist, he banged it twice on the door and took a step back. It was not a blond who opened the door, however, but a dark-haired young woman. He knew from personal experience that she was actually not unattractive, but that fact was easily missed whenever she had her nose wrinkled in disgust as it was now. "Oh," she said, her voice containing all enthusiasm of someone finding a cockroach in their morning porridge. "So you are back."

"Hello to you too, Pansy," he replied with a sigh. "What are you doing here?"

She huffed at him and brushed him out of her way. "Despite how much of a disappointment you are, I reserve the right to check on my fiancé. Now if you will excuse me, I have better places to be than speaking with you."

He shook his head as she walked away. There was a reason he wanted nothing to do with Pansy Parkinson: she was just so bloody weird. Pushing the door fully open, he stepped inside the house that had been his home for half his life, even if it was not any longer. The walls of the house were bare and cold, the life that had once filled the manor absent here without his mother around to soften the harsh edges and atmosphere. The furniture was made more to impress than to offer comfort. Even the colors of everything were unwelcoming.

"You know you are not welcome here," a voice said, and from around the corner stepped his father. The years had not been kind to Lucius Malfoy, not that he would ever allow anyone outside the family to know this. Grey hairs had been clipped close to his temples, turning his previous long locks into a long ponytail. The wrinkles at the corner of his eyes were hidden under any thin layers of skin cream. He still stood tall and firm, the cane at his side for decoration and to hold his wand rather than support.

Much like Draco's own cane, the younger blond thought.

"Not unless you have finally come to your senses and left behind this childish obsession. I can see from your clothing you have not," his father said with a sneer.

"Believe it or not, I didn't come to fight this time." Draco reached into the pouch at his side and pulled out a slim, dark wand with silver tooling. He held it out, and his father's eyes widened as much as he knew his had when Hermione revealed it to him. "I found Mum's wand."

His father looked at the wand, and the older wizard's face become even more like stone than it normally was. "Where did you find that?"

"I had to go back to the manor. Where else could I have gotten it?"

The fist his father had on the cane in his hand tightened as though he wanted to squeeze the life out of something, and he all but ripped the wand out of Draco's grasp. "I shouldn't be surprised," he spat. "I thought you would respect your heritage at least, but that was clearly a fool's expectation."

"What are you talking about?" Draco demanded. This would not be the first time his father tried to take him to task for some imagined slight, but normally he did not do so with such vehemence.

"That was our family home. It has housed the Malfoy line for generations. And you broke in and plundered it like some base burglar," his father said with a sneer. "I expect you were not just in there for you mother's wand, were you? You took everything that our family has gathered over the years and broke it all down like scrap."

"If by 'scrap', you mean the very magic all of you are using to keep this castle going and the wards strong so you can keep living like you did over a decade ago, then yes," he shot back. "Perhaps it has escaped your notice, father, but I am the only reason you, Dumbledore, and everyone else living in this castle have been able to pretend the world hasn't moved on without you. What good was our family's wealth and possessions doing us in a manor caught between worlds and filled with the undead? Nothing.

"Not to mention, I don't think you exactly have the moral high ground when it comes to respecting the family. You're the one who is marrying a girl his own son's age."

His father stood straighter, displaying not a shred of guilt for his choice of wife. "You left me with little choice. I need an heir to whom I can trust the future of the family, not an ungrateful brat who will go gallivanting off and throwing away his magic for cheap tricks even a Muggle can perform. Look at you! You even bear the same tattoos they use to adorn themselves. The Malfoy name can only be carried by a proud Pureblood, not a blood traitor like you."

Draco stared at his father for a long moment, wondering how the older man could be so blind. "You're as big a fool as Dumbledore," he finally said, earning a stern glare from his father. "Your wand is failing you as much as mine did me, but you cling to it as though without it you will fall into the abyss. I took a Mark because this world has _power_ if you would just open your eyes to see it. Power even to cast spells from Earth.

"I still remember what you and Mother taught me. A Malfoy does not bow to others' whims. A Malfoy does not turn up his nose at power. A Malfoy does whatever is necessary to advance his family. Yet here I am, rich and strong, only for you to brush me off as though I am some kind of disgrace and at the same time hold out your hands for the scraps that I deign to bring back to you." He sneered at the man he had once, a long time ago, looked up to as the epitome of what a wizard should be. "In all those lessons, you never once said that the power and influence _'a proper Malfoy'_ should seek could only be that which you approve of and understand."

His father looked at him as though seeing him for the very first time, but whatever thought was lurking behind the steel-grey eyes was unknown to Draco. "What a Malfoy should or should not seek is not something you need concern yourself with any longer," his father finally said. "As of today, I strip from you the name you have betrayed. You are a Malfoy no longer. You are not my son."

Draco stared at him in horror. Was… was his own father truly casting him out?

His father – no, _Lucius_ – was not yet finished. "If Azkaban exists on this world, seek out Sirius Black and ask him if you are enough of a disappointment to join his family. Otherwise you can find a Muggle willing to take you in since you are so enamored with their way of life. Whichever you choose to do, you are not welcome here. Do not cast your shadow on my doorstep again."

"…What are you doing?"

"What I should have done years ago when it became clear you had no interest in our way of life." Lucius pointed at the door. "You had two paths in front of you, to be a wizard or to be a Muggle. You made the wrong choice. Now you have to live with it."

* * *

Harry glanced up when the door to the suites Draco had led them to opened again. He could understand why Draco did not want them wandering around unsupervised, or at least he thought he did. This was a new location that, from everything Draco had told them, was less than amicable to their kind, particularly Dudley and Hermione. If they ran into anyone who wanted to express that displeasure at their presence, Draco might be able to talk the situation down before anything physical occurred.

He could not help but rethink the wisdom of spending their time in this castle if there were as many risks around them as the blond had intimated. They would be safer if they returned to Diagon Village and waited for Draco to return. On the other hand, all three of them could see themselves in Draco; he had been abandoned by his people just as they had been by theirs.

The very Sorcerer he was thinking of walked through the door, and his expression immediately put the Fencer on edge. "What's wrong?"

Draco startled and gave him a look before letting out a broken laugh. "I guess raiding our family home was too much for my father. He officially disowned me."

"What?!" His shout drew Dudley and Hermione from different rooms in the suite. "Why did he disown you? You said your manor was the last place you knew about. After this, there's no more mana to be had, right?"

"Strangely enough, he didn't let me get to that part." The blond slumped into a chair. "Not that it would have mattered in the end anyway. He's already engaged to a girl our age because it gives him a better chance to beget a _'proper heir'_."

"Eww," Hermione muttered.

"That was more or less my thought, too."

"Fathers can be pieces of shite like that," Dudley said, rubbing his upper arm uncomfortably. It did not take a genius to figure out why. He had likewise been disowned for his choices in life, for seeking out the Spires and adventure. Harry would have been as well had Vernon and Petunia ever considered him family in the first place.

"Thankfully the Spires mean we are not trapped with people who don't wish to understand us," Hermione said into the resultant silence, clearly trying to raise his spirits. "We have the chance to make our own way in life.

"Since we're here, though, we might as well make the best of it. You lived here for years, right? Mind showing us around, at least the places we had best avoid? I'd rather not go traipsing through someone's bedroom if I can help it."

"It's as good a way of killing time as any," Draco said after a moment. "If you're thinking about seeking out adventure here, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. There are few places left in the castle that have yet to be explored or used for some other purpose."

That dampened their enthusiasm some, but there was little else to spend their time so they filed out of the suite and followed along as Draco led them through the halls of the castle he had once called home. True to his word, several wings of the castle had been claimed as residential quarters, filled with people who before the Transition had their own homes and lives but retreated to the castle when the world changed. Other rooms and hallways in turn became stores and shops where the use of the wizards' former currency was still alive and well.

It was the classrooms, though, that were in some ways the most interesting.

"You weren't kidding about the demand for new wands," Dudley said into the silence that fell over them as they looked through a window at a bunch of eleven-year-olds trying – assuming Draco was not lying to them for his own amusement – to change beetles into buttons. Why that was considered an important skill, Harry would be hard-pressed to even try to explain, but that was what they were watching. "Replacing those things every few years must have earned whoever makes the wands a fortune."

"Not really. It used to be that a wand would last a wizard his whole life as long as he didn't do something stupid and break it. It's only here on Gaia that wands have a limited number of uses."

"And they use up those wands learning parlor tricks," pointed out Hermione. She shook her head. "I thought the elders back in the Riverlands were stuck in the past, but this is on an entirely different level. It's like no one, not the teachers or the parents or anyone, has figured out that all the rules are different now."

Draco cleared his throat. "We, wizards, as a culture don't do well with change. I don't really understand why, if it's because we're accustomed to changing the world around us instead of the other way around or some other reason, but it is the way it is. Before the Transition, one of the big debates was what to do about Muggleborns because they all wanted to make changes to magical society to bring it more in line with the Muggle world. That wasn't even a recent argument; it had been going on for decades without an answer. Bring them to a whole new planet, and it's no surprise they don't know what to do, so instead of addressing reality and changing their way of life they just ignore it and pretend everything is fine.

"I can't say I have much room to criticize them for that," he said after a couple of seconds. "After all, I've spent the past two years bringing back magic to enable that very behavior. I climbed a Spire, took a Mark, but I never thought too hard about what I would do once I ran out of places to plunder. If they asked me for advice on what to do now, I wouldn't have much to offer them."

A bell rang as the Adventurers climbed a tall tower, summoning those same students they had watched for the noontime meal. Draco threw the trapdoor open, and they exited onto the top of a tower with a fantastic vantage point over the surrounding valley and all the fresh air they could ask for. Harry had not noticed the faint claustrophobia he had started feeling being surrounded by stone like that until he was outside of it. "Say what you want about the people, but the view is gorgeous," he whispered.

"That it is," the Sorcerer agreed, leaning against the stone parapet next to Harry and gazing out into the distance. "This was always one of my favorite places to come to relax when I was in school here. It was like looking out and seeing the entire world sprawling out in front of me, just waiting to be explored."

"Could do without that guard tower sticking out of the forest, though," Dudley chimed in.

"I supposed you're— What do you mean, 'guard tower'?" The Knight pointed at a grey tower just visible over the top of the forest, and Draco shielded his eyes with his hands and stared out in that direction. "What is that?" he finally asked.

"Shouldn't you be the one to tell us?" asked Hermione with raised eyebrows.

"I stood here every day for years. Some days more than once." Draco lowered his hands and shook his head. "I have never seen that before."

"You did say it's been a couple of years since you were a student," Harry reminded him. "Maybe they built it to help keep monsters out or something."

"Which would make sense if they didn't have wards to do just that. Again, this society has a near-pathological fear of change," Draco said. "There's basically no chance they would build a physical defense when a magical solution is available. This is weird.

"Thankfully, I know someone who just might know what in the world is going on here."

* * *

 **This Draco is such an eerie contrast to the one in canon. Of course, so is Dudley, so I guess that's just par for the course.**

 **With the Towers in play, we can finally get back to the adventuring portion of the story.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	14. Trial of the Mind

**Chapter 14  
** **Trial of the Mind**

After climbing down from the top of the tower, Draco led them through a different route than they had walked earlier that morning. Instead of taking them towards the main corridor where it sounded like everyone was gathered together for lunch, his route took them through a quieter portion of the castle and then out onto the grounds.

Hermione looked around the empty lawn and the edge of the forest nearby and asked, "This 'someone' isn't a talking tree or anything of the like, right? Because I don't know if I'm ready for that."

The question caught Draco off guard, and then he laughed. "No talking tree, though if this world had one I'm sure he'd like to be one. He's a wizard, though he isn't given the respect he deserves for what he does around here."

The follow up phrase 'just like me' was unsaid but still clearly heard.

A path has been cleared through the forest, the dirt tamped down by the passage of innumerable feet, and a short walk down that path revealed a greenhouse that looked as though it had been carved from a single block of glass. Sliding a panel door to the side, the blond waved them inside.

By now Harry was becoming accustomed to the wizards' constant use of magic to make things bigger in the inside than they had any right to be, but not even Draco's storage tent has been this packed with stuff. The stuff in this case being, unsurprisingly, plants. Shrubs with leaves of silver and gold that tinkled in a nonexistent breeze. Vines that reached out tendrils towards them that Draco quickly pulled Dudley away from. Short trees bearing orange fruits that lifted the branches they were attached to as though it were only their stems that kept them from floating into the sky. Harry wandered deeper into the greenhouse and stopped when he found a plant with thick, green tentacles waving gently in the air. "Hey, Draco? Are malboros a wizard plant that escaped into the wild during the Transition?"

"Not a chance. They're purely a Gaian monstrosity. Thank Merlin, too. If they existed on Earth, I think we could have kissed the Statute of Secrecy goodbye before it ever came into force." Draco pushed his way through some branches and stopped in his tracks when he saw what Harry had found. "What the devil is that?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you. I've never seen a malboro sapling before, but Dudley and I turned around and ran like hell the last time we saw one that was full grown. I have no idea what their lifecycle or whatever looks like." Because few people really wanted to tangle with a giant plant that spewed toxic fumes and then ate whatever animals it killed, and those who did were either the world's greatest Adventurers or enormous fools.

"I don't think it looks like this. This looks like an experiment gone dreadfully wrong," Draco muttered. "Neville! Where are you?!"

"Draco, is that you?" a voice called out from what Harry had to assume was the rear of the greenhouse. Branches were pushed to the side to reveal a young man with sandy brown hair and a round, babyish face that was liberally smeared with dirt. The smile on his face fell as he took in the sight of the other Adventures. "Oh. I, er, I didn't know you were bringing company."

"Nobody you need to be worried about. Harry, Dudley, Hermione, this is Neville Longbottom, one of the only people I had on my side growing up here. Neville, these are some other Adventures I ran into while I was scavenging. They were interested in seeing just what our world looks like."

"I can't imagine the old man was happy about that," Neville said with a grimace.

Draco shrugged. "He's never happy when I start demanding money."

They must be talking about Dumbledore, Harry realized belatedly. For a moment he has thought Draco and Neville were talking about Draco's father.

"I thought you said all the wizards you grew up with hated Gaian magic?" Hermione asked, looking back and forth between the two wizards. "But if Neville was your friend growing up…"

Draco's face twisted into a strange expression at her question, but Neville just let out a soft laugh. "Don't use the word 'friend' around Draco. I think he's allergic. Anyway, he wasn't wrong. I'm not really a wizard. I'm just a Squib."

"A what?"

"A non-magical child born to wizards. And he's not one," Draco continued hotly. "You're as much a wizard as anyone else here. You wouldn't be nearly as good with all these plants if you didn't have magic."

"Still not enough of a wizard to be deserving of a wand though, am I? He's told you about how rare wands are, I guess," Neville continued after glancing at their faces. "With so few of them, my grandmother thought it best our family's wands go to other children who can actually use them. I can't say I really mind that much though, to be honest. If I were a wizard, I'd have to be in class right now rather than getting to play with my plants all day."

"Wait, wait, wait. Class?" demanded Dudley. "You look like you're the same age we are. Why would you still be in class?"

Neville shot him a puzzled look. "Hogwarts lasts for seven years. We don't finish our education until we're eighteen."

Harry turned to Draco for an explanation, which made the Sorcerer flush with embarrassment. "Once I saw how things were headed, I didn't see much point in staying. I dropped out midway through fourth year." Harry and Dudley both snickered at that, and with his face turning even more red the blond turned to the side and jabbed a finger at the odd tree Harry had found. "That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. First, what in Merlin's name is that?"

"Oh! That. A walking plant stumbled into the grounds a few months back. Dumbledore managed to kill it, but it had some flowers on its, well, _head-bit_ that survived. I wanted to see if I could breed it with one of the plants from Earth. That was the only one that took." Neville shrugged. "Right now I'm just waiting to see what kinds of things it can do."

"This is the only hybrid that survived?" Hermione asked with interest. "What did you cross it with?"

"A tree from back home called a Whomping Willow. It is well known for reaching out and hitting anything that attacks it."

"Or anything that gets near it. Or anything that looks at it funny," Draco grit out through clenched teeth. "It was the most dangerous plant in the Wizarding World. And you decided it was a good idea to breed it with the most dangerous plant on Gaia. Neville, what were you thinking?!"

"Mistakes were made, okay?"

"Not to interrupt," Dudley interrupted, "but the tower?"

Draco sighed. "Right, right. As much as we need to have a talk about you making a malboro–Whomping Willow hybrid," he said with another glare at Neville, "that wasn't the main question on my mind when I came out here. We were on top of the astronomy tower when we saw what looks almost like a guard tower in the forest. I wondered if you knew anything about that."

"The Towers? Not much, but I'll tell you what I do know."

"Hold on. _Towers_?" Harry asked, stressing the plural.

Neville nodded. "Towers. Three of them. They all appeared overnight. It was, oh, six months ago or so? I remember it was the same time the wards started failing, and Dumbledore took down several that the Board of Governors felt were the least important in order to conserve magic. That was not long before this malboro found its way here, come to think of it."

"I knew Hogwarts was running out of magic, but I didn't think it was this bad," Draco said quietly. "This is the first I'm hearing about them taking some of the wards down, too."

The one-shoulder shrug Neville gave was accompanied by a self-effacing smile. "It's amazing sometimes what people will talk about in front of you when they are busy pretending you don't exist. Anyway, about the Towers. No one knows where they came from, what they do, or even what's inside. Flitwick and Dumbledore both tried to search one, but they couldn't so much as unlock the door. Brooms failed when they got close. After that, everyone just ignored them."

"Typical wizards," Draco said with a roll of his eyes. Turning to Hermione, he said, "You wanted something to explore while we are waiting on Dumbledore. Now we have something."

"It does have more appeal than searching a castle that's been used as a school for who knows how long."

"A thousand years," Draco and Neville said in unison.

"It was a figure of speech," the Stellis said with a sigh.

* * *

After grabbing some bread and jerky to munch on from a communal larder on the first floor, Draco led them not immediately to the grounds but instead to a courtyard just a single wall away from the outside. They climbed the ladder bolted to the inside of the wall and stood on the narrow walkway on the top. "That should be the tower we saw from the astronomy tower," Draco said, pointing out a row of stone teeth just peeking out from above the trees. "Neville said they're all around the castle, so if we climb to the top, we may be able to see one of the others. We just have to get inside."

"Even if we can't get in, maybe we could climb up the side to the top," Dudley pointed out. "Just because your flying broomsticks don't work doesn't mean we can't get on top some other way."

"Fair enough." The Sorcerer shielded his eyes and looked again at the tower. "It didn't look like it was that far away, either. We should be able to get there and through the whole thing pretty quickly."

"And just like that, you've jinxed it," Harry muttered, earning a sympathetic nod from Hermione. "Come on. Let's see just how bad this is going to be to deal with now."

The line between the grounds and the forest was clean and abrupt, and Harry looked askance at it. It was Hermione, though, who asked the question. "Is this where the wards end? Or is it an artificial boundary?"

Draco nodded at the second question. "Artificial. The wards extend for several hundred more meters. This has always been the dividing line between the castle grounds proper and the Forbidden Forest."

"The Forbidden Forest." Harry eyed the trees with curiosity and confusion. He and Dudley had been in plenty of forests far scarier and more forbidding than this. "Why was it called that?"

"I've only heard rumors from how it was before the Transition, but supposedly there were centaurs and werewolves and monsters living in the forest. I don't know how much I believe that," Draco added with a frown, "because I've seen wizards try to fight. If there were dangerous beasts running around, they would have cleaned out the school. Not to mention, I think the Transition wiped out what monsters were there in the first place. That's why it's called what it is, though."

Surprisingly, nothing moved about in the forest trying to kill them, and the rest of the walk to the tower was fairly boring in all honesty. Soon enough, a stone wall became visible between the trees, and the cylindrical tower was revealed. It was not that large, only three stories at most and perhaps a dozen meters in diameter. The walls themselves were smooth, the rocks polished to a dull sheen and with mortar that looked as though the tower had been laid just yesterday. Climbing up would be next to impossible, not that there could be that much of value within the tower unless the floors were covered with gold.

"This place seems determined to disappoint me," Hermione said with a sigh.

"You wouldn't be the first one it did that to," Draco replied. "We might as well try the door, though. We're already here."

Walking around the tower's base, they soon came to a flat expanse of stone set in an archway. At the top of the arch was set a large blue gemstone the size of a dinner plate. If they could pry it out and get it to a jeweler, Harry suspected they could make a handsome profit off it. It would make it up for all four of them being stuck here. The door itself, if that was what the flat stone was, appeared impossible to open as it lacked handle or hinges or even a break where it would swing in or out.

As they approached, writing faded into view on the stone.

"The Trial of the Mind," Hermione read. "Only those who can discover the secret to this tower are worthy of the treasure within."

"Discover the secret, huh?" Dudley asked before giving the stone sign a thump with his left fist. "What's the secret, how to get in—"

The Knight cut himself off as their Marks all tingled and burned. Harry looked down at his hand to find his own Mark glowing faintly, as though embers were drifting through the design just under his skin. He attention was drawn back to the door when he heard the sound of stone grinding against stone, and the door slid down into the ground to reveal an enormous room far larger than the tower could possibly hold.

"I'm really beginning to hate the whole _'everything's bigger on the inside'_ thing you wizards have going," Dudley groused.

"We do use it for everything, don't we?" Draco said, not even trying to hide his smile. "Now I understand why Dumbledore and Flitwick couldn't open the door no matter what spells they tried. There is no one in Hogwarts who has a Mark. It's like the doors were meant only to be opened by Adventurers."

"Which, since they're within the wards, strikes me as really weird. Aren't those things supposed to keep Gaia _out_?" Harry asked.

"Yes, but remember what Neville told us. They took down some of the wards to conserve their magic. That might have been enough for these towers to appear, and it makes me very curious just what treasure is in here waiting for us."

The stepped into the tower and looked around at the larger space. Their footsteps echoed in the enormous space, the only other noise present being a bubbling, crackling sound coming from waist-height trenches that turned the floor into a simple maze. A glance into them revealed that they were fulled with either lava or molten metal; regardless of which it was, not something Harry wanted to swim in. Looking up, he saw that there were not any real floors throughout the the tower, just stone slabs linked together almost like a catwalk. "Maybe the secret is how we climb up from the different platforms?"

"Somehow, I don't think that will be our main problem," Hermione said, her eyes focused on something in the distance. Harry looked up to try tracking her gaze, but all he could see was the ledges and slabs. "There are switches and plates on the underside of those catwalks. I don't know how we're supposed to access them, though, especially if the brooms wizards use to fly around don't work."

The boys exchanged long looks. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess," Dudley said after a beat. "Worst case, we stop and climb down and give it up as a bad job."

"Looks like we'll find out right now," Harry pointed out. Their current path took a swing to the right, and from there it split again. One path led to more turns and twists, and the other was a straight shot to a raised disc set into the floor. The quartet walked down that path, weapons out and ready for whatever monster was inevitably going to attack them. The disc itself was marked with a large icon that resembled a bird in flight, its wings curved downwards to form a crescent.

"I… guess we're supposed to step on it?" Draco asked.

Harry shrugged his shoulders. No one else had any suggestions either, and the four of them surrounded the presumed floor plate. "On three," he said. He did not know what this was about to do, but it was probably for the best that they all hit it at the same time. "One. Two."

The other Adventurers tensed.

"Three."

They jumped in unison and landed on the plate. It sank flush against the floor with barely any resistance. The stone walls let out a grinding noise as if there were gears hidden within, and then the grinding stopped.

"Well," Dudley said after a brief pause, "that was anticlimactic."

Predictably, that was when their feet lost their grip on the floor.

The Adventurers fell upwards, rocketing past ledges where more plates were now visible. A walkway at the very top of the tower hurtled at them at high speed. Harry braced himself for the impact, but when he hit it was like falling into the softest pillow in existence.

A loud sigh came from Draco. "Thank Merlin for cushioning charms."

"Thanks for that," Hermione said breathlessly. "I don't think we would have survived that otherwise."

"It wasn't me." The three of them looked at the wizard in surprise only to find him shaking his head. "I'm serious. I think the floors are enchanted with it already."

A thick _splat_ came from further down the platform, and they looked over to find that the lava in the trenches had its sense of up and down affected just as theirs had been. The molten rock that had been simmering sedately was now pouring out and splashing several of the platforms on its way down to them. Harry watched the stream flow off the sides of the platform on which they stood and into the bowl that made up the ceiling of the tower.

"I saw a door there," Dudley said, pointing into the lava fall. "We can't get to it now, but that was probably the way to the treasure and out of this place."

"The secret to the tower," Hermione said, looking around the inverted tower with new insight. "It's a giant puzzle. The plates flip us upside down, and the switches… I don't know what they do, but I bet we'll find out in the course of all this."

"And," Harry said, drawing the others' attention to him again, "as weird as it is, it doesn't look like there are any monsters in here. Just us."

"That's a good thing, isn't it?"

He shook his head at the Stellis's question. "Normally, I'd say yes. But right now, it makes me worried about how hard this puzzle is going to be."

The same emblem was stamped on the floor where they landed, and once they moved off of it another plate rose slightly, ready to be stepped on again. They did just that to flip the tower upright again and fall back to the ground. This time, they took the path that branched off and followed the twists and turns to a second plate. Dudley looked back the way they came. "Did we miss a turn somewhere, or are there only two plates on the ground floor?"

"No, that's all I saw as well," Harry said, looking up at all the levels above them. If there was a simple, single direction they could go, that would be fantastic, but that would not leave much of a puzzle. Either the treasure at the top was going to be mediocre, or this puzzle was about to become far more complicated.

"Let's not make things more complicated than they need to be," Draco said, seemingly reading Harry's mind. "Maybe this is as straightforwards as it looks."

Stepping on this new floor switch replaced up and down yet again, but this time they did not fall all the way to the top of the tower. They passed one layer of catwalk and landed on the next, and they all stayed where they landed until they heard the splash of molten rock against the new floor. The splash was far too close for Harry's comfort, and he looked up to find the curtain of lava pouring onto the floor only a couple of feet away. It cut off what looked to be an entire half of the platform on which they stood, leaving only a left turn leading to an alter or column at the end. Standing up, he edged away from the violently hot liquid and approached the alter. On the side facing the rest of the pathway was a dark metal lever pointing out to the side just begging to be used.

"More switches," Draco muttered.

"This shouldn't flip us again," Hermione say, looking up at the ground. "Not if that is the purpose of the floor switches. Maybe it shuts off parts of the lava?"

Dudley shrugged and grabbed the lever. "Only one way to find out." He shoved the lever upwards with a grunt.

The platform beneath them rumbled, and they grabbed onto the alter as everything started moving sideways. Looking down, they could see that theirs was not the only one moving; below them, many of the platforms higher up in the tower were shifting positions and even changing levels. One switch had completely changed the layout of the puzzle.

"Looks like we don't have to deal with the lava on this level anymore," Draco said, nodding the way they came. Sliding the platform to the side had moved them out of the path of the falling lava and revealed the other half and the floor plate on the opposite side. All they needed to do was not tip sideways and fall into the streaming rock.

The floor plate did not drop them onto the ground floor again as Harry half-expected. Instead they fell onto the lowest of the floating platforms. The place where they landed, though, did not have a floor plate like the others had. They were committed now, Harry supposed, and if they wanted to get back to the ground, they needed to solve the puzzle.

Stepping on the nearer of the two floor plates on this platform, they flipped upside-down again. They were getting more used to the constant inversions and landed on their feet this time. Dudley was about to start walking down the length of this platform, but Harry grabbed the collar of his armor and pulled him to a stop. Not five feet away, lava splashed onto the floor and and off both sides. "Try not to get fried extra-crispy, please," he reminded his cousin. "Looks like this is the wrong way to go."

They stepped on the floor plate again to return to the lowest platform and tried the other plate. They fell even farther this time, past the halfway point and not that far from the very top of the tower. Harry looked down the length of this platform and groaned. It was festooned with short side paths, each of which had a floor plate on it. "Forget figuring out the puzzle. I don't know if we'll remember how to get back to the ground."

"I do," Hermione said, and he turned around to glare at her only to find her not looking at him. She was looking downwards at the door that promised to lead them out of here. "But I would rather not spend all day working out this puzzle. Not when there may be an easier way of getting out of here. Draco, are you up to hitting us with your Float spell?"

"Float?" The Sorcerer followed the Hunter's eyes. "You want to jump off this platform and land on the far end of that one."

"If we go to the end of this platform, it won't be that long a jump. We should be able to make it without much effort."

That would certainly make their trek easier, but Harry could see one glaring problem with Hermione's plan. "What happens when we come back out and we're still stuck on the platform with a wall of lava between us and the plate will take us back to the ground floor?"

"It didn't take much force on the floor plates to toss us around. I barely stepped on it last time. If I hit one with an arrow, we should be able to float back down to a lower platform and from there to the ground."

Draco looked up at the ground floor. "It would take some effort to hold the Float spell on all of us for that long, but if one of you grabbed me and pulled me along so I don't fall into lava, I should be able to maintain it."

The cousins looked at each other. "If they think they have it covered, I think we should trust them," Dudley told him.

Harry still was not sure this was a good idea, but if both Hermione and Draco thought it was doable, he did not have much he could argue against. He shrugged mentally and waved for them to precede him down the platform. "After you, then."

Hermione was right about it not being much of a jump now that they were at the end of the platform, and with Draco's magic they needed to do little more than push off the side and let gravity take them the rest of the way. Harry kept a tight grip on Draco as he lowered the both of them last, but the Sorcerer had things well in hand and needed no assistance landing on the platform. Casting a suspicious eye at the wall of lava cutting them off from the nearest floor plate, Harry followed the others into the white light shining through the doorway.

White suddenly became black, and Harry had to blink his eyes to get them to adjust. Unlike the wide, tall room they came from, this new room was the right size to fit inside the tower. It was also nearly bare. Plain stone floor and walls, and while at first glance the roof seemed to be missing, a second look revealed it to be an illusion laid over stones just like those in the walls. Windows spaced evenly throughout the walls let in fresh air. The only things within the room was a cube of blue wood – not painted, but rather the wood itself was naturally blue – approximately a handspan to a side, and above that was a white bust of a severe-looking woman wearing an elaborate coronet upon her brow.

"That… looks like Ravenclaw," Draco said in awe.

"Who?"

"Rowena Ravenclaw. She was the founder of one of the Houses of Hogwarts where students are sorted when they first start. Hers is the House of the intelligent and curious." Draco steps over to the cube and picks it up. "Which makes me wonder if this is her famous diadem." He flipped the lid off the box and stared inside.

"…And?" Harry asked after several seconds of silence.

"It's a compass." Draco pulled out a metal disc and tossed it to Harry. "Just a plain old compass. It doesn't even work!"

Harry looked down at the disc and glanced back at Draco. He did not know what compasses Draco was used to, but this did not look normal to him. If anything it looked like a clock, one with multiple hands of different lengths and a background with the same curved bird sigil as on the floor plates. The only thing that marked it as a compass at all was the letters for the cardinal directions written on the edges.

Hermione took it from Harry's hands and turned it this way and that. Then she turned her body around and walked to one of the windows. "The longest hand points towards the castle," she said, looking down at the compass again. "Draco, where is the nearest town or village from here?"

"South and just a little west. Why?"

She pulled a normal compass from her pouch and fiddled with the disc. "That is odd, but it might be useful. The letters aren't to orient you; they're to orient the compass. The two longest hands are pointing at the castle and the town Draco mentioned. I think that's what this is for: guiding you to the the nearest places where people live. Not a bad tool to have in your pocket if you get lost in the wilderness."

"And there's this," Dudley said, picking up the square of cloth the box had been sitting on. Hermione pocketed the two compasses as they all came closer to watch him unfold the square. When he was done, they looked in confusion at the rectangle. It was roughly the same size as the maps Harry had seen in shops throughout Gaia, but the lines flickered in and out of sight, never showing more than a few at a time. "I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but it's something."

"What do you think the chances are that there is something in the other towers that will make this readable?" Harry asked the group.

"Too high to be ignored," Hermione said.

Dudley folded the cloth into a small square again and slipped it in his own pouch. With nothing left for them inside the treasure room, they looked back at the doorway that again had light pouring through it and one by one walked through.

Harry looked around him when the spots faded from his eyes. They were not in the puzzle again, but now they were surrounded by grass and trees. Turning around, he saw they were standing outside the tower, and the stone slab had closed behind them. "I guess we're not supposed to go back in."

"Fine by me," Draco said before pointing deeper into the forest. "We still have plenty of daylight left. Who wants to try another tower?"

* * *

 **Maybe it's a good thing Neville has his bouncing episode in canon. "Squib Neville" sounds like the Hagrid of Herbology, and isn't that a scary thought?**

 **The real reason Hermione thought to bypass the puzzle was that I got tired of trying to map out a tower puzzle worthy of Ravenclaw, and writing just what I had figured out proves that was the right way of doing it. An entire video game puzzle like that in text form would have been 5 thousand words of sheer boredom to slog through.**

 **I finally have an answer to how long this story will be! After rejiggering my notes, there will be a total of twenty chapters (including the prologue and epilogue). So actually shorter than I thought it was going to be, but that's just how it is.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	15. Towers of Black and White

**deathbykitsune:** At the rate this is going? No, no sequel.

 **Azrael:** That's the problem with the Towers. Nobody knows who built them. They just sprang up overnight. Best guess anyone has is that its Gaian magic interacting oddly with the Earth magic within the Hogwarts wards.

* * *

 **Chapter 15  
** **Towers of Black and White**

The four Adventures did not know the exact locations for the other two towers, but it was not a hard leap of logic to assume that the other towers were roughly equidistant from the castle. They therefore circled around clockwise, aiming for the tower that would be behind the mountain in which Hogwarts was half-melded. With it being so early in the day, that would be the one that took the most time searching.

Sure enough, it took a couple of hours before they stumbled upon the next tower. Or, more accurately, _towers_.

Harry let his head tilt back as he tried to follow the twin towers all the way to their peaks. "How did we not see these things a while ago? They're way taller than the trees, but I know I sure couldn't see them until we reached this clearing."

"I don't really know," Draco admitted. "It could be something like a Notice-Me-Not charm or a repelling charm of some kind? Maybe?"

Dudley started walking forwards towards the shared base from which both towers grew. "We're here now, that's what matters. And we get to do two towers without having to walk any more. I'll count that as a win."

That enthusiasm waned when they approached a slab that looked nearly identical to the one they had seen in the Trial of Mind. Just like the other tower, this one had writing on the door, but it was longer and carried an unusual warning.

 _Trials of Body and Soul  
_ _The left path will test your martial prowess  
_ _The right path will test your magical skill  
_ _Both must be conquered together  
_ _Else naught but death awaits_

"I don't know what that means, but I don't like it," Dudley said after a minute.

"Considering these towers are only accessible to Adventurers, I don't think it's talking about wizarding magic," Hermione muttered, almost as if she was talking to herself. "Particularly not with the mention of 'martial prowess'. I think if we go up the left tower, we'll probably be facing a lot of magic-resistant monsters while the right tower are stuff like jellies and bombs, enemies that it's pointless to use weapons against."

"And the _'else naught but death awaits_ ' thing?" Harry asked.

"We need to split up. Half in each tower so we can conquer them together. Whatever they mean by conquer."

Harry reached out to touch the stone slab and watched it slide downwards out of sight. Behind the slab was a short set of steps that led up to a platform that in turn provided access to two more staircases. "Two of us are easy. Dudley only has physical attacks, and Draco's a Sorcerer. It's us that are the issue."

"Maybe not as much as you think. My abilities aren't strictly magical," Hermione reminded him. "They're enhancements to my arrows. I still have to hit something to get the ability to stick. You, on the other hand, can actually cast spells. Plus," she added with a grimace, "I don't know for sure if we're just dealing with monsters who are resistant to magic on the left or if it will somehow block magic. The latter possibility particularly concerns me because it would also prevent any healing. If it does, we'd have to split our health tonics if you came along on the left path _and_ Draco would be on his own."

He could hardly argue against that precaution. He might not be as close to Hermione and Draco as he was to Dudley, but the last few days had done much to make him feel as though they were all part of one team. He would not want one of them to die, especially since it sounded like that could cause all of them to die.

Neither of them were the Cleric he and Dudley had been searching for, but together they made a darn good party nonetheless.

"I guess that splits us up pretty well, then." Shoving his hand into his bottomless pouch, he pulled out all the healing tonics within and handed them over to the Stellis. "I'm going to need any spirit herbs or mana tonics you have on you. I have a feeling we're about to burn through our mana in a hurry."

With restoratives rearranged, the two groups gave each other nods before the split up. Dudley and Hermione turned left to enter a door emblazoned with an upright lion, and Harry and Draco took the right-hand path towards a door with a coiled snake. "Of course the magic-only tower would belong to Slytherin," Draco said with a shake of his head.

"Hmm?"

"Slytherin, like Ravenclaw, was one of the Founders of Hogwarts. When I was a student, I was actually in Slytherin house. The lion," he added, pointing across the room to the door Dudley and Hermione had used, "is the emblem of Gryffindor house. Slytherins and Gryffindors are traditionally at each other's throats for just about everything. I have to admit, it's kind of funny that they're paired like this." The Sorcerer shook his head. "Gaia has a sense of humor, I suppose."

Harry was not sure whether that made him feel better or worse. If the planet itself had a sense of humor, what did it say that there were so many monsters around that liked to snack on people?

Draco shoved the door open and sighed at what was revealed. "More stairs," he muttered, pointing to the steps on the opposite side of the round room.

"Hold up," Harry said, actually grabbing the back of Draco's collar to keep him from taking the two steps down to the floor of the room. His eyes danced around the room, even up to the ceiling, but nothing was visible. No monsters, no traps, nothing. "This is going to be an ambush. I just know it."

"I know. We don't have much other option than to spring the trap though, do we?"

"We can take simple precautions, at least." Draco sighed and crossed his arms, but Harry was more focused on the shape his left hand was tracing. It was not a spell he used routinely, but right now it was better to be cautious. "Kind moon," he said, finishing up the half-circle with five lines coming downwards off of it, "cloak us in your embrace. Curtain."

Waves of light like the aurora wrapped around the Sorcerer from out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly. "What was that?" Draco asked, giving his sleeve an experimental tug.

"Curtain. It's a defensive spell, should work to keep any magic from hurting us as much. I don't have nearly as much mana as you do," he admitted, "and somehow I doubt enchanting my sword will count as 'magical skill'. The less healing I have to do to keep us alive, the more I can focus on attacking, which means fewer enemies and less healing. The worst thing that could happen is for us to get stuck in the cycle of trying to heal while all the monsters are still on the attack."

"So clear the room as fast as possible and worry about healing when we're in the clear," Draco summarized. "Got it."

Harry raised one finger. "Unless we're literally about to die. Otherwise, yeah."

Another casting of Curtain on himself, and they nodded to each other. It was time to do this. Draco lifted his leg dramatically and dropped it onto the floor.

Nothing happened.

"They'll come out when we're in the middle of the room?" suggested Draco.

"That sounds about right. Which means they'll surround us." Harry rolled his head and neck then muttered sarcastically, "This will be fun."

"The other option is we leave, grab Hermione and Dudley, and leave the Towers alone."

Harry scoffed at that. Like that was going to happen. Dudley would never let him hear the end of it, not to mention that if they backed down from every challenge in front of them, they were not worthy to call themselves Adventurers. It just meant they had to be smart about it. "Just keep your guard up. We don't know what magic will work best against whatever they throw at us, but fire is generally a good first choice."

There was an emblem of a coiled snake, the same one on the door, set into the floor, and the closer they walked to it the more tense Harry became. It was too perfect. That was when this ambush would inevitably come.

Their feet touched the stone block, and they immediately leapt away when the floor seemed to twist. Translucent hands reached out, followed by arms and heads. Those heads opened wide, fanged mouths and began to wail.

Ghosts. Harry shook his head. Why did it have to be ghosts?

"You're right," Draco said as he made the sign for fire spells with his left hand. "Fire is a good first choice. Flare!"

"Cure!" he called out, chasing Draco's magic with his own. The undead were uniquely vulnerable to healing magic, and it was lighter on his reserves than fire magic. A few more spells from each of them put down the two ghosts they had focused on. Just ten left.

One of them screamed louder than normal, the sound a warning that it was about to curse one of them. Sure enough, the air around Draco spat and sparked, but whatever terrible effects it was supposed to have slipped past him. The Sorcerer returned the favor with another Flare spell.

Harry, meanwhile, just blinked in surprise. He had no idea Curtain could prevent status effects from landing, mostly because he only rarely used it. If this was really true and not just luck on Draco's part, he might have to pull it out more often.

Now that he had a reason to believe that they might have a major advantage over the ghosts, he threw himself into the fight with abandon. Soon enough, a Flare and a Cure spell hit the last ghost at the same time from opposite directions, and it exploded into a cloud of light grey smoke. Draco waved the smoke away from his face. "That wasn't so bad."

"It's also the first floor," Harry reminded him. A finger rose to point at the stairs leading further up, and the blond's shoulders slumped. "Ten dimma says it's only going to get worse."

"Do I look like a fool to you? I'm not taking that bet."

* * *

Their steps fell slowly as they climbed yet another flight of stairs. As soon as they reached the landing, Harry slumped and landed on his rear. "No more. I'm done."

"Me too." Draco slid down the railing to sit next to him. "I sure hope the others are having an easier time than we are because this is ridiculous."

Harry nodded in response to that. They had to pass six floors to get here, and each one was harder than the last. The ghosts were more than easy compared to the jellies of every element on the next floor. Then the dusk crows that attacked with blinding dust and wind spells, the autonomous cannons, the armored volcano monster, the giant jellies that launched spells neither of them had ever seen before. If this tower was trying to kill them, it was doing a damn good job and had nearly succeeded. A twinge in his side reminded him of just how close it had come to finishing him off, and he pressed his hand against the still bleeding wound. "I'm tapped out, man. I can't even cast another Cure spell."

"Just drops left for me." Draco waved his hand at the closed door waiting for them. "Maybe the tower knows that, too. It doesn't look like it wants us to go any further. Or maybe it's the last floor." Harry shot him a look, and the wizard explained, "Seven's a powerful number when it comes to magic. This is the seventh floor. Might be we're close to done."

"Somehow, that just makes me think there's going to be something even nastier behind that door."

"Only one way to find out." Draco shoved his hand into his pouch and pulled out a vial of electric blue liquid, then rolled the spirit tonic to Harry. "Drink up, me hearties."

The Fencer rolled his eyes but uncorked the vial. "I'll yo ho to that."

The mana tonic immediately lifted his fatigue as new magic poured through his veins. Not enough to put him completely back to rights, but definitely enough so he could heal the tear in his side and the scratches that littered Draco. Once that was done, he pulled a bundle of leaves out of his own pouch and tossed half of them to the Sorcerer. "They won't do as much as the tonic, but they're better than nothing."

Draco sighed, swallowed his own tonic, and then started chewing on the leaves.

Between the restoratives and the opportunity to sit down and stop, the pair felt more like themselves a few minutes later. Harry climbed to his feet and approached the door. There was neither lock nor handle, but after entering two towers, he figured he knew the drill by now. Rather than search, he simply laid his hand on the smooth surface.

"Beyond this door lies the greatest of magical dangers," he read as words write themselves into the door. "Only those with cunning and cleverness can survive it. Any who doubt themselves should return from whence they came. What do you think, Draco? Are we cunning and clever enough?"

"That or we're blithering idiots." Draco pulled himself up with his cane and walked over to stand next to Harry. A second hand joined Harry's. "Only one way to find out."

Sensing their resolve, the door faded away into nothingness to reveal a room filled with nothing but black. That was inviting, Harry thought sarcastically. "Let me refresh our Curtain spells before we do something stupid."

"Else." Draco gave him a weak smile. "Before we do anything _else_ stupid."

They stepped into the darkness, and five feet away from the doorway the stone reformed leaving them into total darkness. Harry's hand tightened around the handle of his rapier even though he knew it would do him no good.

Something slid harshly against stone, and a low, high-pitched voice almost literally hissed, _"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four."_

"Creepy voice in the dark. That's a great start," muttered Draco from beside him.

Light flared up all around them, and Harry blinked at the sudden glow of a hundred torches set into the walls next to yet more portals of pitch black. Between the torches were gigantic snake heads carved out of stone, all of them turned towards another statue at the end depicting a bearded man's head.

The same scraping sound came again, and Harry and Draco looked at each other before turning further to look behind them.

A gigantic snake, its head taller than either of them and with enormous yellow eyes, flicked its tongue at them.

 _Basilisk_.

No words were exchanged when the planet gave its warning. They just ran, both away from the snake and away from each other. The snake slithered after Harry, and he would have rolled his eyes if he had the mental space to spare. The parts of his brain not occupied with running away or trying to come up with some plan were just gibbering in terror. "Got any ideas?!" he finally screamed.

"Run faster!"

The sound behind him changed, and he shoved himself sideways just in time for the snake to ram its head into one of the many statues. "Not helping!"

Draco had climbed on top of one of the many statues and pointed his cane at the snake. "Don't stop! Don't look behind you! Megafrost!"

Why he needed not to stop was obvious. Why he should not look backwards was less so, but he was willing to listen to that advice, especially when the snake let out a sound that sounded almost like a scream. Hopefully that would slow it down a little, and Harry sprinted across the room and dug his fingers in between the carved scales of one of the statues. It was only when he was near the top of the head that he looked backwards.

Great shards of ice littered the ground, and the Basilisk was whipping its head back and forth to dislodge the pieces that were still stuck on its snout. Draco, standing only a few statues away, kept adjusting his aim with a frown on his face. "Just stay… still… Megafrost!"

More ice exploded, growing out of the snake's head.

Harry sketched a lightning bolt with his left hand and pointed his right at the snake's body. "Megavolt!" Four tongues of lightning shot out of his palm and slammed into the Basilisk's scales, causing the monster to spasm and shake. "You look like you have a plan. Care to share?"

"I know what a basilisk is. They existed on Earth, though they were considered Dark creatures and were illegal to breed. If you looked into their eyes, you would instantly die."

"We saw its eyes. We aren't dead," Harry reminded him.

"I know that!" Draco snapped. "Maybe its magic doesn't work on Gaia any more than wizards' magic does. Maybe it's just a snake with the same name. I don't know, but it's beyond stupid not to assume it can do the same thing. So I'm trying to gouge its eyes out."

Even if Draco was wrong about its eyes letting it instantly kill someone, which Harry dearly hoped was the case, blinding a giant monster still was never a bad idea. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"

"Do you know any second tier offensive spells besides Megavolt?" Harry shook his head, and Draco pointed at the long body of the snake. "Then just keep shocking it. As long as we can keep it from killing us with its stare—"

The snake screamed again and breathed out an acid green fog that quickly covered half the floor.

"—and don't fall in that," the Sorcerer added, "we should be okay. Hopefully."

"What about that fire spell you used on the rats in the sewers? Do you think we could use that to keep it from coming over here?"

Draco shook his head. "I'd worry about cooking us alive as well."

A valid concern as far as Harry was concerned. He would rather not burn either. Instead he pointed his hand at the giant snake again. "Megavolt!"

"Megafrost!"

They alternated throwing lightning and ice at the snake, and the longer they went the more hope Harry had that they would actually make it through this. His lightning spells were doing well to keep the monster pinned in place in addition to dealing damage, and whenever it was recovering from the electric shocks Draco's ice would hit it again and make it lash out with more poison in its immediate vicinity. All that together meant it remained on the opposite side of the room from them, which in Harry's opinion was the best place for it to be.

Just as he knew they were both getting tired, Draco cast another ice spell, but this one did not erupt from the beast's nose. Instead it appeared in the Basilisk's mouth, and it gagged on the spiny block of ice for several moments before its head dropped onto the ground.

"It is dead?" Harry asked. The snake twitched a moment later, but it was just the body beginning to disintegrate. "Guess so."

The darkness between the candles began to fade, revealing daylight that had been masked by the presence of the Basilisk. Sparkles of that same sunlight streamed in and pooled together in a puddle on the floor from which rose a pedestal with a single switch. Harry pointed to it and asked, "Think that means we 'conquered the tower' or whatever?"

Draco just shrugged.

The pair climbed down from snake head statues and walked over to the opposite side of the room, from which they could see the other tower were Dudley and Hermione were fighting. The windows of that tower were darkened, much to Harry's concern. "Think they're okay?"

Part of the wall of that tower shattered, and a massive dog with not one but three heads fell out of the resultant hole. It hit the ground, and the windows turned clear just as theirs had.

"…Never mind."

A figure stepped out to the edge of the hole, and when Harry shielded his eyes he could make out the leather armor and massive bow. "You guys okay?!" Hermione shouted.

"We're good!" he yelled back. He glanced over at Draco. "Ready to flip that switch?"

The Sorcerer sighed and walked off.

"Get ready to flip the switch!" he called out to Hermione, who waved her hand above her head in response. He sure hoped that meant they were in place because he counted down, "Three! Two! One! Now!"

Something clicked behind him, followed shortly by a clang. Turning around, Harry saw the source of that noise was a metal chest that had appeared out of nowhere on the other side of the pedestal from the switch. "Anything interesting in there?"

"Let's find out." Draco flipped the lid and peered inside. "Another piece of parchment like the one we found in Ravenclaw's tower. And also this." He held up a glittering crystal the length of one of their fingers, dangling from a cord. Draco frowned and rubbed his chest. "It's making my magic feel weird. Not in a bad way," he added before Harry could ask that very thing, "just weird. Almost like it's moving faster through me."

That did not sound normal, but neither was the compass they had found. "Weird doesn't necessarily mean bad," he said, as much for his companion's peace of mind as his own. "The compass wasn't. If it's giving you some kind of benefit to your magic, you might want to keep it."

"You're sure?"

He nodded. "You use more magic and more expensive spells than I do. I don't know if that thing is supposed to make your magic more powerful or more efficient or what, but regardless you'll probably get more use out of it than I will."

Grey eyes flicked back and forth between Harry and the pendant before Draco slipped it over his head. "Okay, then. Looks like the door's open again," he said, pointing at the doorway where the stone had once more vanished. "Let's meet up with the others."

The rest of the tower was mercifully empty of monsters, though Harry had been half convinced that they all would have come back to life or something just to spite them. Instead their climb down to the ground floor was undisturbed, and they found the rest of their crew already waiting for them.

"You don't look too bad," Dudley said, looking them both up and down. "Had an easy time of it, did you?"

"That would have been nice," scoffed Draco.

That comment earned tired smiles from both the Knight and the Hunter. "Understand that feeling. Hey, Harry. Catch."

Dudley tossed a roll of cloth at Harry, and he caught it before looking down at it in curiosity. What in the world could this be? Unrolling it, he discovered it to be a headband with an eye made of beads sewn into the fabric. "Not sure it's my style," he said after a moment.

"Probably not, but if the note that came with it is to be believed, it will give whoever wears it a clear mind and keep them from becoming confused or disoriented during a fight." Dudley shrugged. "I figured since you're the only one of us who can do any healing, you needed it the most."

The Fencer's eyes moved over to Draco. "Are you sure our chest didn't come with a note as helpful as that?"

Draco shook his head with a sigh. "Slytherin would have expected us to figure it out on our own."

"I guess I wouldn't have made a very good Slytherin, then. I like having stuff spelled out for me from time to time." Shrugging, he tied the headband so it was tight against his forehead. "That's two, technically three, down and one to go. I don't know that going after the last one would be a good idea, though. Draco and I are both basically out of magic."

Hermione licked her lips and twitched her tail nervously. "I don't think this would be the best time to go hunting for the last tower, anyway."

What did she mean by that? Harry walked down the steps to the entrance of the tower and stared in shock at the dark night that awaited them. "We weren't in here this long," he said almost to himself.

"These places are Underhills," Hermione reminded him. "Time doesn't flow normally. Midnight makes as much sense as any other time."

He sighed, long and loud. Might as well focus on the bright side. "Well, I guess no one will wonder why we're headed for bed so early, then. Looks like we're tackling the last tower tomorrow."

* * *

 **I'm really starting to hate this story. :( The setting was fun to come up with, and the first half was easy writing, but the second half? Each chapter has been torture to pull out of my muse. I just don't want a second abandoned story on my profile.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	16. Trial of the Heart

**Mernom, thereaperd:** I do have a plan in place for the ending, and I think that's a large part of the problem. I had already come up with all the twists and turns before I started writing; in fact, I think this is the only story where I had the whole thing planned out start to finish before I put the first word to the page. I find that's where a lot of my enjoyment comes from, the planning, so it's become very… boring?… writing out what I already know is coming without any surprises.

My next story I've intentionally not planned out in great detail for that very reason, so there will be plenty of opportunities for my muse to spring something on me without warning. Whether that will be good or bad is anybody's guess.

 **I'm back! It's been a little while, I know. The good (?) news is that since we only have a few chapters left, I'm just going to hammer those out and get this thing finished rather than bouncing back and forth between this and MGET. That means there** _ **shouldn't**_ **be as long a delay between chapters as there has been recently.**

* * *

 **Chapter 16  
** **Trial of the Heart**

Morning would always come whether anyone wanted it to do so or not.

Harry rolled over and covered his head with the pillow. After what seemed like an hour trek in the mist and dark last night, he really wanted it _not_ to be morning just yet. There was plenty of sleep he had to catch up on, and his magic still had that stiff and aching feeling to prove he had not yet recovered all his mana after fighting through the Slytherin Tower yesterday. Sadly despite his grumblings, the sun did not reverse its course and return below the horizon, so with little else in the way of options Harry threw off the blankets and stumbled into the attached bath.

After a wash, a shave, and getting dressed, he felt significantly more human, and he padded his way into the main living area of the suite their party had claimed. "Anyone else still exhausted?" he asked as he buckled his sword belt.

"Blegh," Hermione said in reply, not opening her eyes nor sitting up from where she was lying on her back on a couch.

Her obvious disdain for being up and awake put a smile on Draco's face. The Sorcerer and Dudley sat at one of the little tables with playing cards in their hand. That must have been how they passed the time since both of them, much to Harry's disgust, were morning people. They had probably been up for hours already. "That's too bad," Draco said nonchalantly, placing a couple of cards in the pile between them and drawing another. "By now it should be the peak of breakfast. Plenty of food to go around."

One of Hermione's ears twitched at the mention of food, and the catgirl opened one eye to look over at him. "You're sure?"

"I lived here for most of my life. I think I know when breakfast is."

That earned a long sigh from her, and the Stellis rolled off the couch onto her feet. "Fine. For food, I'll get up."

"Does this mean we'll be eating with all the rest of your old pals?" asked Dudley while he tossed a card of his own onto the discard pile. Draco froze for just a moment, but it was enough for the Knight to nod to himself. "You've been doing your best to keep us away from the other wizards. I don't know why, but that you were doing it was pretty obvious."

Hermione's face fell into a thoughtful frown. Harry knew he had not noticed this, and apparently neither had she, but Dudley had a tendency to figure the strangest things out sometimes. "I'm curious why you're doing that, too."

"Maybe he's just embarrassed to be seen with us," Harry suggested.

Draco sighed and set his cards down. "It's not embarrassment," he finally said. "Part of why I've been avoiding them is that _I_ don't want to deal with them. In their eyes, I'm a dropout who went off to live among savages. I really don't care to listen to their taunts when we know they're idiots."

"And the other part of it is that we're the savages in question?" Hermione prompted.

"More or less." His eyes moved to meet all of theirs in turn. "I don't know just what they would say to you, but I would rather not find out. Not to mention if they realize Harry is _the_ Harry Potter. You saw how Dumbledore reacted when he heard your name," he reminded them. "Your story is famous among wizards. Before the Transition, you were considered a savior. If they find out that you're here but you did the same thing I did? It could get ugly quick."

"So by avoiding them, you get to protect us as well as yourself," Dudley said in summary.

Draco opened his mouth, closed it, and then nodded.

"I can understand that, I guess." Dudley turned to Harry and Hermione. "What do you say to raiding the kitchen of this place and heading back out to the forest? There's only one tower left, after all."

"The sooner we get that done, the sooner we can sit back and figure out what these pieces of parchment are all about. Maybe take a nap." Hermione shrugged. "I'm in."

Looking at the three of them, a soft, delicate smile curled Draco's lips. "Thanks."

* * *

With the other towers already conquered, it was simplicity itself to track down the last. Like the Trial of the Mind, this one was a single tower, round in shape and only twenty feet high. The writing on the stone slab that served as a door was the only thing that marked it as anything unusual.

 _Trial of the Heart  
_ _No man is an island  
_ _No individual can succeed alone_

"Less than helpful," Dudley said, slapping the door with his left hand so his Mark would open it. The door slab faded away to reveal another split staircase just as they found in the combined Trial. "Though I suppose it makes a little more sense now."

"No individual can succeed alone," Hermione repeated. Her eyes followed the stairs up to the two doors set ten feet apart. "Do you think we'll have to fight another gauntlet of monsters?"

"That wouldn't fit." The three of them turned to find Draco looking at the stairs with one hand rubbing his chin. "Gryffindor and Slytherin were always in conflict. Always in competition. This would be Hufflepuff's tower, and Hufflepuff is all about fairness and teamwork. I don't think this will be a competition. We're going to have to work together."

"We still don't know there won't be any fighting," Harry reminded them.

Hermione started climbing the stairs. "In that case, let's prepare for anything this trial can throw at us. Harry, you and I will take this right side. We have a decent mix of magic and physical attacks. Dudley, Draco, you take the left. You'll be able to cover each other's weaknesses. If this is a mental challenge rather than a physical one, Draco has the most knowledge of the castle and its history, and I should be able to figure things out quickly as well."

"And Dudley and I are chopped liver," Harry added with a faint smile that grew wider when Hermione's face flushed with the realization of what she had just implied. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding. Splitting up like that makes sense."

"Right," Hermione muttered, "so, er, let's get started?"

The first challenge revealed to be the doors themselves. Harry gave the handle of the right-sided door a twist only for it not to budge an inch. "That's going to be a problem," he muttered to himself. Glancing over showed Draco was having the same issue. "You said this would need to be a teamwork thing, right?" he called over to the other staircase.

"Yes?"

"Maybe we need to open the doors at the same time."

Dudley shrugged. "That sounds like it'd work. Okay, I'll count it down. On three."

Harry tightened his grip on the doorknob.

"One. Two… Three!"

This time the knob twisted, and he flung the door open.

What waited beyond was… just a room. The same window design as at the top of the first Tower they tackled let in sunshine and fresh air, and once more in the far side of the wall was a small bust depicting a woman with plump cheeks and an easy smile. Below that bust was a box of bright yellow wood.

"Was… that it?" He looked to the left to find another open door and Draco already walking in. "That was it?! We just had to open a pair of bloody doors!"

"Don't complain about things being easy. I'll take it," Hermione reminded him.

"I'm fine with easy, too," he argued, "but there's easy, and there's downright insulting! After that blasted upside-down puzzle and having to fight a bunch of monsters, I was expecting _something_! This is just… just…"

The archer could not hide her mocking half-smile. "Anticlimactic?"

"YES!"

"Something you might need to know." Harry slowly turned to stare at Draco. "Hufflepuff? Everyone knows it's the house of duffers. Maybe this is as complicated as they could manage." The Sorcerer shrugged when they all stared at him. "What? It's true."

"Right…" Harry said, though he could not help looking back at the doors. Maybe the trial was just broken? Even as he thought it, he knew it was a dumb idea. He just really and truly was disappointed that there was _nothing_ here. Even a minor puzzle would be less of a disappointment.

"First things first, let's find out what's in the box," Dudley said, none of _his_ enthusiasm gone. Lifting the lid, he let out a pleased noise and reached far deeper into the box that should be possible. A long handle came out, followed by a heavy hammer head. He repositioned his grip on the war hammer and gave it a few swings. "Anyone mind if I keep this?"

"Knock yourself out. I'm more interested in this." Draco reached into the box as well and pulled out yet another flickering diagram. "What do you think we have to do—?"

His question was cut off when the square of parchment in his hands started flapping in a nonexistent wind, as though it was determined to fly away. Where it would go, no one knew, and Harry was not wholly convinced it was trying to go to a _place_ at all. Opening his pouch, he barely had time to pull out the parchment he took from the Trial of the Soul before it pulled itself out of his hands and sealed itself to the scrap in Draco's grasp, the edges vanishing as though they had never been separated.

"Pull out the others. I think we're about to get some answers."

Dudley and Hermione both pulled their own parchments out, and these too headed straight for each other. All four pieces together again, waves of white light swept over them and took away the yellowing of age. Now it looked like any other piece of paper he had ever seen. Harry took a step closer to look at the surface. When they were in pieces, they had lines that flickered in and out, never enough to make out what it was supposed to be. Now those same lines were flashing faster and faster, making a progressively more complete picture, until finally they all flashed together one last time.

What was left was a drawing of several green patches of irregular shape on a background of blue, eight in total and forming a loose circle. In the middle of that circle was a single solid black diamond surrounded by white swirls. A compass rose sat proudly in one corner, revealing exactly what they were looking at.

"It's a map," Hermione breathed. She reached into her pouch again and pulled out a more typical map for comparison. "And I think that's us," she added, pointing at the continent to the north-west of the diamond. "It's a map of the whole world."

Dudley huffed. "That's great and all, but what's with the diamond and all those red lines?"

The lines in question were something Harry had noticed at well. They crisscrossed the landmasses randomly, drawn not in normal ink but instead one that gleamed as they tilted the map in the light. For all they seemed to have no rhyme or reason when it came to the continents, they eventually led to the same place: the diamond.

"They can't be roads, not with them crossing the water. Winds, maybe?" Hermione shook her head. "I don't know. We'd need to ask a true cartographer to look at it. Maybe it's something extremely specialized that only a few people know how to read?"

"Or," Draco said with a dark scowl, "somebody who's lived long enough to see a bunch of stuff. Merlin, he's not going to let me live this down." He rolled up the map and put it away with a sigh. "I don't know that we have much other choice. Let's go talk to the old man."

* * *

It was a short hike back to the castle, and from there Draco led them once again to the gargoyle standing guard before the winding staircase that in turn was the lone entrance to Dumbledore's office. "I wonder if anyone ever got trapped in here because the staircase broke?" Harry wondered aloud as they climbed.

His random question earned him some odd looks, but after a moment Draco shook his head. "I don't know. Probably not. Since this is all part of the castle, the only way for it to fail is for the castle's magic itself to fail, and that would never happen back on Earth. Not to mention, there are other ways of travel a wizard could use. Floo, Apparation, even brooms if they were really desperate. They could just fly out the window.

"But," he continued after a beat, "with Earth magic failing as bad as it is, it could be possible. Let's just hope it doesn't happen while we're still up here." Unlike last time, where he just opened the door and walked in, this time Draco banged twice on the wood.

"Come in."

Dumbledore looked more than a little surprised when the door opened to reveal the four of them. "I know I am an old man," he said, pulling a brass pocket watch out of his robes and checking it, "and old men are forgetful, but I distinctly recall you saying I had three days to get your gold. It has only been one."

Draco visibly bit his tongue and jerked his head to signal Hermione to take the lead. They had discussed the matter on their walk back to the castle, and when there was no one else in earshot Draco had been willing to admit that if he talked to Dumbledore about the map, one of them would push the other's buttons. Since they actually wanted information to act on, they decided as a group that Hermione would be the best to ask as Dumbledore had no obvious interest in her.

"We decided to do some exploring while we were here," she began, "and when we heard about the Towers, we thought they would be a good place to start. Inside we found—"

"Inside?" Dumbledore interrupted. "You found a way inside in less than a day? The staff and I spent two weeks looking for the way in."

She held up her left hand to display her Mark. "The doors opened for us immediately. We think they only allow Adventurers inside. Regardless, we found this map." She pulled the rolled up map out of her pouch and held it out towards him. "One thing that really confused us was a number of red lines running all over it. Draco thought you might be able to explain what they are supposed to represent."

The old man's blue eyes twinkled. "It is not a sign of weakness to ask for help, my boy," he said, completely misinterpreting the reason why Draco was not speaking for himself. Taking the map from Hermione, he unrolled it and spread it over his desk. "Now, let me see…"

His eyes roamed over the map, and the smile he had worn faded. Was he as in the dark as they were? After several seconds, he asked, "Do you have a map of our continent I could see?"

It was only after examining Hermione's other map and cross-referencing it and the new map that his eyes widened. He pulled open a drawer in his desk and pulled out a _third_ map, and after looking at it he gave his desk a definitive nod. "This is fascinating. Come here and look.

"First, see this map?" he asked, showing them the one he took from his desk. It was vaguely familiar to Harry, but considering the wizards' obsession with Earth and Earthly customs was even stronger than that possessed by the people of Whinging Village, he could take a guess. What caught his eye were all the lines covering the map, very similar to those on the map from the Towers. "This shows Earth as it once was, but more importantly, it shows Earth's ley lines. You could think of ley lines as underground rivers of magic, flowing back and forth all over the world. I believe your map shows the ley lines for this world."

"Why do all these ley lines connect to one place on Gaia? They didn't do that on Earth," Harry pointed out.

"Very good catch! You're right, they didn't. This arrangement, will all magic flowing to and from the same central point? That is neither normal nor natural. If these truly are ley lines, then this diamond mark is most likely the location from which the curse on this world originates."

The Adventurers looked at each other in confusion. "Curse?" Hermione finally asked.

He nodded. "Indeed. You are all old enough to remember when the world was normal, before it became what we see now. This world in which we live now is a transformation, a cursed state. Many of us have tried to determine where the curse comes from, for if we determine that, we could potentially undo it. We have hit dead ends at every turn, but now you have brought me this." He tapped the map. "This appears to hold the answers we needed. It may even be the explanation for how it happened in the first place. Some experiment or curse on one ley line spread throughout the world. That much, there is no way to know. Not now, at least.

"I would ask that you leave this in my care for now, Draco," he said, standing up and looking decades younger than he had when Harry first laid eyes on him. "I would like for Septima, our Arithmancy professor, to examine it as well. There is much arithmancy could offer us in determining where this location lies. And from there? It is high time a wizard checked on things."

"Er, o…kay?" Draco said, obviously as uncomfortable with the sudden fervor as Harry was. The quartet slowly backed out of the room and back down the stairs. Only once they were in the corridor did Draco speak. "That was… different."

"You can say that again." The scope of what Dumbledore was trying to do was absolutely staggering. Reversing the Transition? It did not sound like it should be possible! The Transition rewrote the whole world, brought five races who had never met together. Undoing something like that boggled the mind. It also brought a dark thread of worry to the forefront of Harry's mind. "When Dumbledore was talking. Did anyone else feel… I don't even know how to describe it."

"Surprised? Concerned? Disturbed?" All good suggestions, and Harry nodded at Hermione. She nodded back. "Yeah. I know plenty of Stellis who would like to go back to the way things were before the Transition. The forest cities, the feasts and festivals of fish and game. He would have plenty of support if he asked them for help."

"Everybody at Whinging Village would help him, too, even if he is a freak wizard," Dudley agreed.

"But still, it isn't like everything can just go back to how it was before," Harry pointed out. "We've been in Gaia for ten years. People who died won't come back to life. Things that have been said and done won't suddenly be undone. Everything we've experienced will still be a part of us. And for every old fart who wants to rewind the world there's someone like us who grew up here. What would happen to all the kids who were born here who have never known anything but Gaia?" Hermione's ears twitched, which brought another strange thought to his mind. "Plus there's everything we learned from other races. We're talking about undoing that. Friendships between humans and Stellis and every other race, lost forever."

"What about the halfsies?" Harry looked over at Dudley in confusion, and the Knight elaborated, "The kids born to two different races. We know for a fact humans can have kids with Stellis and Osgul, and didn't we see that one kid when we were in Cambridge for a job? He was half Eddek and half Kobold, which I don't even want to imagine the mechanics of. If Gaia got split again and all the races went back to their own worlds, where would these kids go?"

Hermione bit her lip. "Even if they went with one of their parents, they'd forever lose the other. It'd tear families apart as much as friends. And that's assuming they didn't vanish somewhere between their parents' worlds."

Harry looked over at Draco. "You're being quiet." The blond shrugged. "You know, you can feel free to disagree with us. We're not going to lash out at you or anything. I'd actually appreciate it if you could convince us we're worried about nothing."

Because otherwise, all Harry could see was the perils of trying to turn the clock back. He wasn't sure about any benefits.

"That's just it. I don't disagree." Draco shook his head and continued, "I also have a selfish reason for why I don't like the idea, though, and I know it. Here, I'm a Sorcerer. I have skills and power. If the Transition gets undone, I become just a Hogwarts dropout who's been disowned by his family. Not a lot to make Earth an attractive alternative. Even with all the danger, I have a better life here than I would back there."

That was something Harry hadn't considered, nor did it seem anyone else had either. Dudley reached out and gave Draco's shoulder a squeeze, which earned a small thankful smile from the Sorcerer.

"Maybe we don't need to worry," Hermione said with a forced smile. "Maybe they won't find a way to get to that place at all." Her smile fell. "But, just in case, let's check on things tomorrow. That should also give us time to think about… everything."

Somehow, Harry doubted that more thinking would give any of them an answer of what to do.

* * *

 **Originally I was going to have a teamwork puzzle inspired by the co-op mode of Portal 2 as the core of the Trial of the Heart. This just struck me as way too funny not to use.**

… **Sorry to any Hufflepuffs who are reading, I guess?**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	17. The Temple

**"Hufflepuffs aren't duffers!":** You're talking to one of the _least_ Hufflepuff people ever, at least if the online Sorting is to be believed. I could get it to flip pretty easily between Slytherin and Ravenclaw by changing a few answers, and at one point I talked myself and it into Gryffindor, but after several experiments I never saw a Hufflepuff. So yeah, maybe a little biased. :D

* * *

 **Chapter 17  
** **The Temple**

Harry walked through the dark common area towards the kitchen. The candles were snuffed out and the lamps were turned down low, appropriate considering how it was currently the middle of the night, but they still gave off enough light for him to make his way to the icebox and pull out a bottle of dark blue kombooj juice. Pouring it into a glass, he returned the bottle and leaned against a nearby counter. "Can't sleep either?" he asked the figure sitting in the dark.

Someone rustled in the chair in the corner. "No," Hermione finally said. "My brain refuses to turn off."

"Mine too."

Silence returned, and he sipped quietly from his glass. He suspected what was keeping Hermione up was the same thing that was keeping him from finding sleep. Despite hours passing, he still could not shake off the concern he felt about Dumbledore and the other wizards having a map and a road to the source of the Transition, assuming that was what the diamond on the map represented.

"I keep thinking about all the things the elders would tell us about our old world," Hermione abruptly added. "All the wonderful things we had that were lost. Skills in alchemy that are gone because we don't have the herbs and reagents here to replace them. Artificers who created great sky-boats but are now missing, leaving us with gaps in our knowledge that cannot be bridged. They would have no hesitation reverting the world back to how it was."

Harry nodded. How often had he heard the inhabitants of Whinging Village, some of whom still insisted on calling it by its old name of Little Whinging, decry their lack of television and automobiles? Things he simply could not remember and had lived essentially his entire life without.

"But then I also think of everyone who has set out and made a life for themselves here. Not just people our age, but those who were adults or teenagers during the Transition. They had the same history as people who complained about the change, but they went out and did something. They made places for themselves in this new world."

"There's an old man in Glasgow," Harry said when it was clear Hermione had no more to say right then. "Runs the apothecary. He's a bit of a cynic, but something he said once stuck with me. He said life was shite on Earth just like it is here. The smell might be different, but it wasn't any better."

Hermione snorted at the crude analogy.

"And there are plenty of people running around who seem to be perfectly happy with their lives now. Whether it's because what they really care about they still have or because they found something here they didn't have there. We've both heard people complain about things used to be better, but have we heard it so much because that many people are saying it or because the small number of people who feel that way just won't shut up while all the rest who are okay with how things turned out are busy with their own lives?"

"I don't know. The Stellis in the Riverlands are a lot like the wizards. They want what's familiar and refuse to step out their front doors to see what new things the world has to offer now. If they are only comparing what they remember with what they think the world is like, or only judging it with the assumption that new things have to be bad, how much can we trust their opinions at all?"

Harry nodded.

The archer shifted in her chair again. "I'm scared," she admitted into the darkness. "If Dumbledore really can do what he thinks he can and reverses the Transition. I can't help but think about what Draco said. I don't think there will be much cause for Hunters if the world turns back. All my skills and knowledge are geared for this world, and I know it's selfish to say that when we just talked about how people can adapt to whatever world they find themselves in, but I can't help but ask myself _why_. Why do I need to adapt to how the old world was when I fit right in on this one? Why is the old world so much better than the one we have now? Our races had more _things_ , but do these things bring happiness? If they were so important, why is no one trying to learn how to make them again?No one has ever been able to answer any of these questions to my satisfaction."

She sighed quietly. "I'm scared that if they succeed in what they are trying to do, all that's going to happen is that I'll find myself just as lost as they are now. That isn't who I want to be, but isn't it selfish for me to make that decision when I can't know if things will be better or worse?"

"It's not selfish." Pushing himself off the counter, he stumbled his way to a chair close to hers. "We can't know whether things will be better or not. Everything's just too complicated to come to a simple answer. All we can do is make the best decision with what we know and live with the consequences."

"What would you do if it was your decision?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I have some of the same doubts you do. All I know is that I'm worried about how obsessed the wizards are about this, just like the people where I grew up. You're right, they made their minds up as soon as they were in Gaia and haven't looked back. I can't see them wrestling with the possibilities like we are. If they are that blind to all that's good here, I don't know if I trust them to make a good decision for the whole world, but that's exactly what they'd be doing."

"Then what are we going to do?"

"…I don't know."

* * *

For the third time in as many days, the four Adventurers found themselves in the headmaster's office. This time it was not just him and them, however. Seven people were waiting in the room when they arrived. Next to Dumbledore himself was a blonde woman with impressively thick glasses and to her other side a tall young man with red hair pulled back into a ponytail. On Dumbledore's other side was yet another woman with black hair and a stern expression that was a perfect match to her austere pointed black hat. Continue down that line was a giant with a thick black beard who looked like like he definitely had Osgul somewhere in his bloodline followed another half-human, though this exceedingly short man must have been part Kobold. The last was once again a human with long blond hair who looked too similar by half to Draco to be anyone but the father who disowned him shortly after they arrived in the castle. When the door opened up, they all looked over obviously surprised at the interruption and who was behind it.

"Draco, my boy. I did not expect to see you and your friends again so soon." He raised a bushy white eyebrow. "Is there a reason you are here? As you can see, I am rather busy at the moment."

"That's why we're here," Harry said, stepping to the forefront. "If you're about to go to whatever that diamond is on the map, we want to head out with you."

"Why would you want to come with us?" Dumbledore asked, suspicion taking root in his eyes.

His suspicion was probably well founded, but Harry had an excuse ready. "We're Adventurers," he said simply. "We go where the action is, and the source of the Transition? It would be hard to find a better adventure than that."

Draco's father scoffed. "So you expect us to bring along four children for the simple reason that you want to see something? This is not a vacation or a tour, boy. This is a task for grown wizards."

"We expect you to bring us along because you need us," Draco shot back, and a glance behind him showed Harry that the Sorcerer was not looking at his father but instead rubbing a bit of dirt out of the crease of one hand. He looked the very picture of nonchalance. "The Towers where we found that map only opened to the Spires' Marks. If this place is the same way, you'd get there only to find yourselves trapped with no way to move forward."

"He's not wrong," the woman – witch? – with the spectacles said, looking up from the map to Dumbledore. "If the Towers all behaved that way, then this place doing the same is a possibility. A likelihood, even. It would be worthwhile for one of them to accompany us."

"If one of us goes, we all go," Dudley said without hesitation.

The old man stroked his beard. "Then it seems we have little choice but to allow you to accompany us. This is rather convenient in some ways, I suppose, as I would need to ask you for one of those jars of magic. We need it to create a portkey to take us to our destination."

"As long as I still get paid for it," Draco muttered loud enough for everyone in the room to hear it. His comment earned other scoff from his father as well as the redhead, but Harry looked back to catch his eye. Sure enough, Draco looked worried, and somehow Harry doubted it had anything to do with dimma.

Dumbledore led the entire group to another room just off his office and down a second staircase to a different part of the castle. That answered Harry's question about whether a headmaster could be trapped in his own office. The room that was eventually revealed was rather small, giving it a cramped feeling when all eleven of them were assembled inside. Unlike the grey of the rest of the castle, the walls here were a solid black and faintly reflective, making it all the creepier. "Draco, open one of the large jars, if you would."

Just open it? If he remembered correctly, Draco had said that opening the jars would let the mana within simply spill out and make it useless. Unless that was the reason this room looked the way it did, to contain the mana that would pour out.

While he was thinking, Draco was acting, and soon the Sorcerer summoned a jar nearly as large as his own chest and filled with what Harry could only compare to liquid starlight. It was also far lighter than it looked if the ease with which Draco held it was any indication. "Here goes nothing," Draco said, and grabbing the metal lid he gave it a sharp twist and tug.

The mana contained within the jar might have been a white liquid, but what rushed out was a cloud of bright green with streaks of blue and yellow scattered throughout. The mist surrounded them like a multicolored mist, and Harry's heart started racing as he felt his own magic swell and begin to move faster within him. He did not know what all this concentrated mana was doing, but he was getting worried that it was nothing good for his health.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, showed none of the concern Harry felt. Instead he raised both hands in the air, one holding a wand and the other empty. These hands started moving in circles, and as he did so the mist left the air around them and gathered into a thick cloud above their heads. "Hagrid, did you bring the rope?" he asked, only the tiniest bit of the strain present in his voice.

The giant man pulled a thick rope out of his pocket, and once it was on the ground Dumbledore slowly lowered his arms to guide the cloud of magic down to and into the robe. The hand with the wand stopped making circles and instead went into an elaborate dance. " _Portus_ ," he muttered, the nonsense word apparently meaning more to him than it did to Harry. At that command, the rope flashed a bright blue a single time and writhed like a snake for a few seconds before returning to normal.

"Did you need to use that much power for one portkey?" Draco asked, staring at the rope with wide eyes.

Dumbledore sighed. "Perhaps not. However, I remember how much power creating the warp stones required, and they are naught but specialized and permanent portkeys. It is easier to use all the magic you released and waste it than try to portion it out, especially with as finicky of a working as creating a portkey in this world is.

"Besides," he continued with a small smile, "if all goes well, the waste soon will not matter."

Harry and Hermione shared a look. His words did nothing to soothe their fears.

"Minerva, I leave the castle in your care until we return." The dark-haired witch gave him a nod, and he turned his gaze to the rest of the group. "Everyone else, grab on. We have places to be."

"Just to warn you," Draco muttered to them, "this is going to feel almost exactly like the warp stone did. Be ready."

The same warp stone that brought them to the castle in the first place? The torture device that spun them around and around until Harry wanted to be sick all over everything? He shot Draco a panicked look.

"Three. Two. One. Here we go."

Dumbledore tapped his wand on the rope, and the world fell apart around them.

The trip from Diagon Village to Hogwarts took a few seconds. This was much longer and all the worse for it. By the minute mark, Harry really did throw up, his vomit scattering into the whirl of wind and color. By three minutes, all that was coming up was bile. Only after five minutes did everything begin to slow down, and Harry collapsed onto the ground. It took several deep breaths and at least ten seconds of just _not moving_ before his stomach calmed in its rebellion. Finally he gasped, "What happens if you throw up riding that thing?"

"I must admit that I don't know for sure," Dumbledore said with an irritating level of cheer. Harry cracked open one eye to glare at him. "My suspicion, however, is that your breakfast is now spread across the countryside."

"I hate him," Harry muttered to himself. Rolling over, he pushed himself to his feet and looked around. "What is this place?"

If the dark blue water crashing against the rocky shore was any indication, they were on some island in the middle of the sea. Above and all around them sat angry grey storm clouds, slowly turning around and around the tiny spit of land they found themselves on. Their actual landing spot was a small outcrop of the island itself. Right before them stood a square gate made of red wood, and beyond that was a flight of stairs leading to a tall pyramid-like building with corners that curved upwards towards the sky.

"It appears to be a Japanese temple," Dumbledore told them, looking in the same direction Harry had. "Strange that this curse would originate in Japan, not to mention that it could spread as far as Britain. If they had not toyed around with the ley lines, it would not have spread far beyond that country's borders."

The stairs guided them directly to a set of wooden doors set in the white walls of the temple. This would be the first test, Harry thought. It was here where, if their Marks were needed at all, they would be required. Dumbledore placed both hands on the double doors, no doubt thinking the same thing.

Then he pushed his hands to the sides, and the doors slid open.

Spherical lamps ignited, casting the hallway beyond in a warm glow. Between the lamps stood identical statures of a humanoid figure with a lizard's or a dragon's head, curved swords held upright in their right hands. The hall ran straight for several hundred feet before abruptly turning to the left.

"This is it?" Draco's father sneered as the group made their way down the hall. "A temple with a bunch of statues. This is what you were so afraid of, Dumbledore?"

"No one would tie their curse into a location and thereafter leave it undefended. There is some means of protection. We simply have not seen it yet."

"Or this 'protection' is only in your mind." The blond stopped in his tracks, and the rest of the party did as well. "I see no reason why we should not demolish this building with blasting curses and sift through the remains. Or burn the whole thing down. It would be faster than searching it by hand."

Dumbledore sighed. "We do not know where the curse is bound."

"And it won't matter if we destroy everything!" the man snapped back, his pale face flushed with anger.

A pair of black eyes opened on the statue standing behind him.

"Behind you!" Draco screamed.

Draco's father started to turn, but it was too late. The living statue raised its sword and brought it down a single time. The wizard's body fell to the ground, his hair spreading out when his severed head rolled to a stop. The other wizards stumbled backwards away from the sudden act of violence, and even Harry had to admit to being surprised, though it did not stop him from grabbing his sword by reflex.

Looking at them, the statue stepped off the small pedestal on which it stood.

Jets of colored light flashed from the wizards' wands. Apparently they had recovered enough to fight back against something clearly coming to kill them all. Harry had no way to tell exactly what the magic did, but one thing was obvious: they were all meant to hurt this thing. The spells slammed home, but none of them so much as rocked it back on its heels. They just splashed against the stone hide without leaving a mark. Raising its sword again, the statue parried the next three and flicked the fourth back into their midst. The reflected spell hit the short man, the half-Kobold, and he dropped like a stone.

A roar rivaling any produced by an angry bear came from the giant, and he rushed the dragon-man. His fist slammed into its head, and that did what all their magic spells had not. The dragon-man stumbled back a step as the giant shook his hand out, but a step was all that punch had earned. Turning its head back towards the giant, it lashed out with its own left hand and struck the giant across the face, staggering him enough that he barely dodged the sword that was swung right after.

"Another one!" Hermione shouted.

Harry whipped around to see that further down, a second statue had come to life and was staring at them. It opened its mouth and screamed.

Dudley yelled back and charged.

Harry screamed, "Dudley! No!"

The Knight skidded to a stop just in front of the statue and swung his war hammer. It was going to miss; Harry could already see it. It was several inches too short—

The long handle of the hammer knocked the sword to the side, and Dudley jabbed it at the statue's head as though it was the point of a sword. The heavy hammer collided with stone, but that too was not the goal of Dudley's attack. Instead he hooked one end of the hammer around the back of the statue's head and _pulled_ , ruining the statue's balance and throwing it into the wall where it knocked over another statue. That one, thankfully, did not awaken like the others.

"Run!" Dudley shouted, taking several steps back from the dragon-man that was already climbing back to its feet. "Run run run!"

"Move it, old man!" Draco said as he sprinted ahead past Dudley. Harry and Hermione were right on his heels, and as soon as Dumbledore passed by him Dudley quit watching the statue and started running just as hard as he could. Around the corner the turned, finding yet another hallway that curved to the left at the end. "Are we supposed to run through the entire building like this?!"

"It would make sense!" Dumbledore called back, surprisingly spry for a man who had to be in his eighties. "If it is all one long hallway, that is plenty of time for statues to leap out and surprise us!"

"You mean like the ones already chasing us?!" Dudley demanded. Harry chanced a glance backwards and immediately piled on extra speed. Not one but _four_ statues were behind them, and a fifth had been stepping off a pedestal to join the pursuit. That first one had proven that it was immune to wizard magic and could take way more physical damage than they could dish out before it crushed them, and Harry was not holding out hope that Gaian magic could eliminate them with a single blow.

If they stopped running, they were dead.

Hallway. Hallway. Hallway, hallway, hallway! It was a constant sprint with the sound of feet growing steadily louder behind them, and the longer this hallway ran the more worried Harry became. The living statues were just that, statues. They did not feel pain or fatigue. The same could not be said about the Adventurers and the wizard trying to flee.

The turned another corner, and this time the hallway did not continue on. A door stood a short distance in front of them, plain wood the same red as the square arch they had walked under to step onto the island proper. Draco flung the door open, and Harry waved for Dumbledore and Dudley to get inside before he slammed the door shut. The horde of statues turned the corner just as the door fully closed.

"I hope that keeps them out," he panted, fully aware that if the door was really just wood, it would not. "Any other way out of here?"

Silence was his only answer.

Fearing the worst, he slowly turned around and found himself staring at the same thing that had so captivated the others. The room they found themselves in was enormous, easily taking up the entire space of the temple, and floating in the air filling that space were what had to be two dozen or more gigantic rings all looped through each other with impossible precision. He could not tell if they were glass or stone or metal because all of them shone with an inner glow, each in a different color but together displaying all the colors of the rainbow. Strange symbols drifted over their surface, giving them an arcane and forbidding appearance.

"This… is the thing that caused the Transition?" Draco asked in a tiny voice.

Dumbledore nodded slowly. "I do believe it is." He stepped closer to the massive structure and stared up at it.

"How in the world does he plan on destroying this?"

Hermione's soft question was answered as the rings moved. They slowly descended, and the closer they got to the group the smaller they became. The rings turned, stopping next to and sometimes almost within each other, until they had merged into a single flat disc no bigger than a dinner plate. It hung in the air, almost asking to be taken.

As if accepting its invitation, Dumbledore reached out for it.

"Wait."

Harry's demand stopped Dumbledore in his tracks, and the old man turned back to look at him. The suspicion that had glimmered in his eye before in the office was back in full force. "What is it, my boy?"

"I… Are we sure this is a good idea?" Dumbledore frowned in confusion, and Harry continued, "Breaking this thing, it isn't something we can undo. We have to be sure this is the right decision."

"You don't think it is?"

"I don't know!" He threw his hands up in the air. "Look, I'll admit it. I don't remember much about Earth. I grew up here, on Gaia. I know that you want to go back to how things were, but I know there are good things in this world too. How sure are we that things are going to be better if we do this? I can't answer that question, and neither can you. Not if you spent all your time in the castle. Neither of us can make that call, not when the fate of the world hangs in the balance."

"We can, and we shall," Dumbledore said in a firm voice. "There is nothing true this dream world can offer that can justify staying our hand."

"What do you mean, dream world?" Hermione asked.

"Exactly what I said, my girl. This world we are trapped in? It is not real. It is an illusion, a fantasy. A fake that covers and masks the truth. That is all it ever was and ever will be." He shook his head. "Dreams can be beautiful and tempting, but it does not do to dwell in dreams and forget to live.

"We have dreamed overlong as it is, and it is time for us to wake at last."

A… dream? That was what Dumbledore thought Gaia was. Not a real place, a real world, but some kind of fantasy? A fantasy the whole world and five different races somehow came up with at the same time?

Harry could not believe that, but it answered the question that had circled in his mind all night and all day. Almost without conscious thought, he drew his rapier.

"What are you doing, Harry?"

"What I have to. I can't let you destroy this world. Not when you refuse to consider the consequences of your actions. Step away from the disc."

The old man frowned, the light coming from the lamps along the walls and the disc behind him giving his face a sinister cast. "Are you really going to fight me, all to protect a dream?"

"No, he isn't." Dudley stepped forward, and Harry turned to stare at him in betray. That betrayal was washed away when he saw that Dudley was not looking at him at all. He was watching Dumbledore, and he swung his hammer and grabbed just below the head with his other hand. Footsteps on Harry's other side turned out to be Draco also stepping up, his cane held firmly in the middle of its length in preparation to be used as a wand. Behind him came the now-familiar creak of Hermione's bow being drawn.

"We are."

"I see." Dumbledore drew his wand from his sleeve. "I do not wish to fight, but you leave me no other choice."

The old man slashed his wand like a sword, and the party scattered, Draco and Harry running to the left while Dudley and Hermione went right. The slash turned out not to be an attack, however. The polished wooden floor was covered by a thin layer of smooth ice. It would keep them away, give him space to work. It was the exact strategy a Sorcerer would employ, which meant a wizard might have similar weaknesses.

"Draco, how close are wizards and Sorcerers when it comes to fighting?"

"Depends on the wizard."

Dumbledore flicked his wand at the ground, and for a moment Harry thought he might be undoing his own defense. Then a thin wave of sand rushed out from his feet, collecting into ten or so individual trails. When they reached the end of the ice, the trails jumped out of the ground in the form of wolves formed from sand and stone with more sand floating around them. They snarled, showing off their long fangs, and leapt into the fray.

"Volt!" Harry shouted, dropping his sword to point a finger at the nearest sand dog. If adventuring had taught him anything, it was that creatures of rock and stone had a tendency not to like lightning magic. The creature hit the ground spasming for a moment, then started climbing to its feet as the next one ran past. "Volt! Volt!"

"Megavolt!" Several bolts of lightning flew from Draco's staff, each one skewering a sand dog and collapsing them into dust. Which would have been more useful were Dumbledore not tossing another pack their way already. "I can hit them hard. I just need you to keep them off me."

Which meant he needed to wade into the middle of the monsters and fight them with blade rather than spell. Harry rolled his shoulders and held his blade horizontally. In all honesty, close up was where he preferred to fight, and now that he had proof lightning was effective, there was no reason not to leverage that information. "Spear of heaven," he muttered, trailing his hand along the rapier's blade, "seek the beast's heart. Megavolt."

Lightning coursed along the blade, and to his surprise the blade itself also glowed a bright yellow. His eyes widened. Whether it was the magic in this place, the incantation, his desperation, or some combination of all three, he did not now, but finally, _finally_ , he had managed the next stage of his Fencer abilities.

A sand dog rushed at him, and he gave it a quick swipe. The conjured monster froze in place, the lightning magic not only hurting it but paralyzing it as well. A smirk spread across his face before his sword stabbed another. "I do believe I can keep them off you."

He rushed forwards, his blade stabbing each sand dog as soon as it came in arm's reach. Whirling around as he was so he could renew the status effect on the dogs as it wore off, he also had a good view of Dudley and Hermione. The Knight had likewise waded into the fray, his hammer coming down to smash the sand dogs' heads in. Hermione, on the other hand, was sending arrow after arrow into the group to pick off any that Dudley did not break on the spot.

Something swung through the air with the sound of a whip, and Harry had to jump back to keep from getting hit by a string of fire. He grit his teeth. Fighting this guy was even worse than fighting the Conjurer in the mines. At least _he_ had the decency to throw out only two pets at a time and took time between his bigger attacks. This really was like fighting a Sorcerer and a Conjurer at the same time.

"Megaflare!"

Draco's spell landed in the middle of the ice and exploded, sending a wave of heat washing over Harry and only lightly singing the nearest of the sand dogs. If Harry were not in the middle of fending them off, he would have shot the Sorcerer a glare for his pitiful aim. Normally he was much better than that!

"Inflammum mundus."

Harry remembered that spell, the same one Draco had used to eliminate the rats in the sewers beneath Whinging Village. He abandoned his attacks and ran, Dudley doing the same on the other side of the room. The last embers from Draco's attack flared up into a tornado of flame that reached towards the ceiling and expanded outwards, consuming the sand dogs and the ice and Dumbledore himself. A glance over showed that Draco was gritting his teeth as he waved his wand, struggling either to keep it going or to keep it contained.

With a sigh, he allowed the firestorm to collapse back on itself.

The far end of the room was less burned than everything else, due in no small part to the fact that Dumbledore was still standing with a translucent shield between him and the eye of the storm. The ice and sand dogs were gone, though, and that was all Harry needed. He sprinted at the old wizard, his sword still sparking with contained electricity, and Dumbledore's eyes widened.

Just like a Sorcerer or a Conjurer, up close was where they were most vulnerable.

Dumbledore moved his shield to block Harry's stabs, but he was not alone. Dudley charged in right behind him and took a swing at Dumbledore's unprotected back, forcing the old man to turn around and deflect the blow before switching back to Harry. Dumbledore's left hand shot forward, a spell coming not from the wand but the hand itself pushing Dudley back several feet, but all that did was give the Knight room to run back in and add the momentum to the strength of his next swing.

An arrow flew from the back of the room and stabbed through Dumbledore's knee, driving him to the ground with a scream.

With the shield falling apart from lack of concentration, Harry stepped forwards and rested the point of his sword against the old man's chest. "That's enough. This is over."

"You plan to kill me, Harry?" Dumbledore asked in a grave tone, teeth clenched from the pain.

"I'd really rather not," he answered honestly. "But I'm not letting you break that disc or the rings or whatever it is. I won't let you destroy this world just because you refuse to believe it's real."

"You would prefer to live your life in a dream?"

He shook his head. "That's where we have to disagree. This world is more real to me than half-forgotten memories of Earth. You might feel the same if you ever opened your eyes and tried to live in the present rather than hold on to the past."

A shudder ran through Dumbledore into the floor, and something trembled in the back of Harry's mind. The wizard narrowed his eyes at Harry. "And I will not allow you to keep us from going home."

"Big words coming from somebody on the ground," Dudley taunted.

The trembling in his head turned into a warning shout, and he barely had time to take a step away before he was flung backwards to the ground. A scream of pain and rage came from Dumbledore, and Harry staggered back to his feet and stared in horror.

Dumbledore's left hand was clutching his right, the wand of dark wood in that hand glowing brightly as though it was metal fresh from the forge. Despite his struggles, he could not force himself to release it as he floated into the air. That hot glow flared, sending what looked to be ghostly fire racing up Dumbledore's arm and over his chest. It encased his entire body, and it must have been agony if the fresh shout was a sign. The glowing wand shifted, widened, and as they watched the point swelled outwards to turn into a skull with its mouth open in a scream.

"That, er, isn't what's supposed to happen when Earth wands change," Draco said, his voice just as scared as Harry felt.

The bright orange robes the wizard wore caught alight and burned away, revealing defined muscles no man his age had any right to have and especially not when he spent his life teaching magic. His hair came alive and started growing, sweeping out across his shoulders and winding under his chin. As it grew, his head started rising into the air as though it were no longer attached to his body.

"What the hell is going on with his neck?!"

"That isn't his neck, Dud," Harry shouted back as he realized what was going on. "His chest is getting longer!"

An arrow and a fireball both flew in from behind him, but they shattered as soon as the hit Dumbledore's skin. The old man's face shifted and deformed, transforming from a human into something like a lion. Two tails of hair cascaded off his shoulders like waterfalls, and the longer the grew the more obvious it became that something was taking shape within the hair. Reaching past his fingertips, they finally stopped only for long black claws to protrude from the ends.

The monster Dumbledore had been transformed into raised all four of its arms, two human and two bestial, and roared.

Now the voice in the back of Harry's head stopped its wordless shout. Instead, it spoke two words. The name for this creature that stood before them and hungered for their death.

 _Grand Sorcerer._

"Oh, bugger me."

* * *

 **Am I making the video game thing too obvious? :D And next, the final boss. This is gonna be FUN.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	18. Final Boss

**Chapter 18  
** **Final Boss**

Harry did not need the voice of Gaia whispering into his ear to know the four-armed monstrosity Dumbledore had transformed into was dangerous. The bestial roar it threw their way was evidence all on its own, as was its near-human form and the fact that what they just saw was not supposed to happen whenever an Earth wand transformed. This was something new and unique, and new and unique monsters were always something to be especially cautious of.

Which meant it was no surprise when Dudley immediately rushed in.

The Grand Sorcerer turned burning blue eyes on the Knight, and it swung one white-furred arm with almost casual violence. A paw as large as Dudley's face hit him in the chest, throwing him away and scoring four claw marks on his chest armor. Now the leonine head turned to Harry, those same eyes filled with a terrible _hate_.

How much of Dumbledore's memories this thing had, Harry could not hazard a guess, but it would not surprise him if it remembered the recent defeat. The Grand Sorcerer pounced and brought its other arm down in an overhead swing, and he had to jump backwards to evade the sharp claws. He darted back in and scored a scratch on the paw. No matter that he already expected it, it was still a disappointment to see that paralysis had no effect on this creature. That would have been too convenient.

The monster moved again, its feet never touching the ground, and this time the backhand slap connected and threw Harry into the air to come crashing back down onto the hard stone ground. The landing knocked the wind out of him, but laying on his back was a great way to end up dead, so he immediately rolled over and pushed himself back to his feet. A look over his shoulder at the monster had his eyes widening.

The Grand Sorcerer had four arms, and now it was clear what the human ones were for. It had raised the snarling wand up, and fire was gathering at the tip and pointed right at him. An arrow flew through the air and hit the monster in the head, and it roared as its aim went slightly to the side. Harry ran a few steps in the other direction then several more when the fireball exploded out as a cone of flame that sprayed all the way to the wall. Magic normally had an extensive range, and there was no telling just how far that spell would have reached were it not for the solid wall in its way.

Harry glanced around. Sure enough, there was nothing in this room that would serve as cover to protect them from the flames. Dodging to the side was their only option.

Another arrow flew at the monster only to be blocked by a furry arm, and a spray of lightning came from the other side of the room. The Grand Sorcerer raised its wand and swung it down as though hitting the air with a hammer, and a trail of tall icicles sprang up from the ground towards Draco. The blond took a couple of steps out of their path then started running away more quickly when the icicles curved that path to chase after him.

Dudley was back in the fray, and Harry shook his head. Despite the faint blue glow around him that signified Dudley was using his power to increase his resilience, Harry did not like those odds. Not when this monster before them seemed to be just as good close up as it was with magic. He sheathed his sword and traced the same shape as he needed for Curtain, but this time he was not imagining the moon. "Sunlight itself serves as our shield," he muttered. "Wall!"

Cheerful yellow hexagons dotted Dudley's armor and faded nearly out of sight. That should give him a little more protection from the monster's claws.

The wand swung again, but despite the tingle of warning that ran up Harry's spine he could not see what it was doing. There was no fire, no ice. Nothing had happened. So why was there still a feeling of impending doom?

His hands tingled, and he glanced down to see a spark jump from one finger to the next. That was the last warning he had before his world erupted into a curtain of lightning bolts that all coursed through him at once. He would have screamed, but none of his muscles were cooperating. They were all locked up, dropping him to the ground with smell of burnt flesh and hair.

The pain finally started to fade after a few moments, but his body still did not respond. His eyes would have widened if he had control. This was not just lightning. It was the same paralysis he had used on the sand dogs. He would not be capable of moving until the effect wore off, and considering the flames once more forming around the head of that screaming wand, he was a sitting duck.

Flames shot out at Draco rather than Harry, and the Sorcerer was still able to run and get out of their way. Footsteps came from behind him, and something smashed against his shoulder and washed over him with a wave of green light that instantly loosened his muscles. "Are you okay?" Hermione demanded, pulling him to his feet.

He staggered a little, but now he could actually move. It must have been a panacea she threw at him, for little else could get rid of a magical paralysis. "Been worse. Cure," he added, coating himself in light that was a slightly different shade of green to heal the injuries inflicted by the Grand Sorcerer's spell. Knots he had not been able to feel released themselves, and he stood up straighter as the worst of the pain vanished. "We need to watch out for those spells. I wouldn't be surprised if they all have status effects attached."

"What effects are we looking at?"

"If his lightning spell is any indication, they probably have the same effects as my Statusblade ability. The fire will also poison you, the ice will slow you down, and obviously the lightning will paralyze you." He rolled his shoulders. It was dreadfully unfair that the Grand Sorcerer was immune to status effects but could still throw them out, but Gaia was rarely fair. "You and Draco keep hitting it from far off. I'm going to help Dudley up close."

"No, you're not."

Harry blinked at the force behind her denial. "I can't just leave him there on his own!"

"You're the only one of us who can use healing magic," she reminded him. "If you get knocked out or killed, we're done for."

Which meant the best place for him would be playing support. In any other situation, he would have argued and grumbled, but the Grand Sorcerer swung its massive arms and hit Dudley again, sending the Knight to the ground with large gashes torn in his metal breastplate. "Shite. Megacure!"

A spray of green sparks landed on Dudley, and he hopped back to his feet. A gesture at his pouch had his trusty axe reappearing, and with an axe in one hand and a hammer in the other, Dudley bellowed out a war cry and started swinging with wild abandon.

"…Maybe you have a point," he said with a sigh.

Hermione nodded and darted away, apparently deciding that the two of them standing together would be too tempting a target for the Grand Sorcerer if it looked over at them. He could not say she would be wrong in that assumption, either. They needed to be mobile, making sure that it could not hit them whenever it decided to take its eyes off Dudley.

Not that a little extra protection would hurt, he decided as he coated himself and then the rest of the party in Curtain.

The next several minutes passed in a terrified blur. Draco threw his spells, Hermione shot her arrows, and Harry focused on casting Cure after Cure at Dudley and renewing Wall and Curtain whenever they wore off. Twice Draco was caught by the Grand Sorcerer's fire spell and needed to have the poison removed, and Hermione was caught by the train of icicles after several attempts on the monster's part to pin her down. Harry was lucky in that he managed to avoid another cone of flame and a second area of lightning. It helped that after the first one, he was being much more cautious about any strange feelings.

Finally, Hermione moved in slow motion to let loose another arrow. It sped up as soon as it left her bow and slammed hard into the beast's chest.

The blow staggered the Grand Sorcerer, and before Dudley could take another swing it burst into ethereal flames. Something fell out with a thump, and when the light faded the smoking body of an old man once more lay on the ground.

"Dooo… yooouuu… thiiiink hee's still alive?" Hermione asked, her voice and the rest of her suddenly catching back up to the rest of the world.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. He crept up to the body, his senses on high alert. He did not expect Dumbledore to suddenly jump up and resume fighting, not with how bad he looked, but Harry had seen stranger things. A closer look proved that Dumbledore's chest was still moving, but he did not open his eyes. It was good thing, too. It was not just the old man's robes that were scorched. His face was a patchwork of skin that was red and only lightly singed next to areas that were completely charred black. "He's alive, and thankfully unconscious."

Hermione let out an audible sigh of relief, and Harry could not help but think back to the man she had shot and killed in the mines where they fought the Conjurer. It was no surprise she did not want another person's blood on her hands.

"Hey, Harry?" He looked over at Dudley, who in turn looked over at the disc still floating in the air. "What do you think we're supposed to do with that?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders. He had about as much idea about what to do as the rest of them did. Still, with no answer making itself known, he walked over to the disc and reached out for it. Maybe if he touched it, he could give it some command or something. His fingers hesitated a moment, but with a deep breath he closed his hands and braced himself.

Only for nothing to happen.

He opened one eye, then the other. "Up?" he told it in a tentative voice. "Go away?"

"It doesn't look like that's going to work," Hermione said in a droll voice.

Rolling his eyes at her comment, he opened his mouth to reply when _something_ felt like it forced itself through his forehead and into his brain.

 _Harry pulled on a black robe not unlike the brightly colored ones Dumbledore wore. The room he was in appeared to be a changing room of some kind, though not one he recognized. No clothier's store he had ever been inside had a banner hanging from the ceiling depicting a light standing on its hind legs. Nor did he know the redheaded boy who was tightening a red and yellow striped tie around the collar of his shirt._

 _The door at the far end of the room opened, and a girl walked in wringing a scarf in the same colors as the boy's tie in her hands. He blinked when she looked up at him. If he did not know better, he was say it was Hermione. It could not be her, though. What happened to the cat ears that marked her as a member of the Stellis race?_

 _The girl took a deep breath. "I want a word with you, Harry," she said, proving beyond a doubt that this was Hermione, although he had yet to hear her use such a bratty voice. "You shouldn't have done it. You heard Slughorn, it's illegal."_

 _Done_ it _? Done what? Who was this Slughorn person? What was going on?!_

" _What are you going to do, turn us in?" demanded the redhead, a scowl on his face and the tips of his ears turning red, though whether it was anger or embarrassment Harry could not guess._

 _His mouth opened, but he did not voice the thoughts that were running through his head. "What are you two talking about?" he asked instead, and without waiting for an answer he turned around and hung up a long set of robes, this time in a bright red same color as the banner. A sly grin split his face once he was out of sight._

" _You know perfectly well what we're talking about!" Hermione shrieked. Harry wished he did because he was more than a little confused. This… other him, though; this counterpart? He seemed to know exactly what was going on, and Harry did not like it in the slightest. "You spiked Ron's juice with—"_

Harry jerked away, and the vision ended as his hands released the edges of the disc. "What the hell?" he said to no one in particular.

"Harry, what's wrong?" Dudley asked.

"I… don't know." He shook his head. The memory of what he had seen did not leave him, and he could not help but puzzle over it. Alternate Hermione had accused alternate him of spiking somebody's drink, and from what she said, it was with something illegal.

There were only a few things Harry could think of that would be slipped into someone's drink, most of them being drugs or poison. He did not think it was the latter – he did not _want_ to think that – but the sly smirk on alternate him's face did not inspire confidence.

"I saw a… a vision, I guess. Of life on Earth."

"Was it everything Mum and Dad and everybody else in Whinging Village claimed it was?"

Harry shrugged. His first vision had not been enough to tell. Maybe a second look would shed more light on the subject? With far more hesitance this time, he reached out again and pressed his fingers on the surface of the multicolored disc.

 _He opened his eyes to find himself in a very different place than last time. Rather than a clothing store he was outdoors in a village, though the roads were a strange solid black rather than cobble and bordered by paths of grey stone. Night was falling, but there was still enough light to see Dudley standing in front of him. Not that Dudley looked anything close to normal. Rather than armor he wore thin clothing not unlike what Harry could vaguely remember they wore the first few months of living in Gaia, and more disturbing was that this alternate Dudley had little muscle and far more than his share of fat. It was like he was a man who had gone to seed much, much earlier than should be possible._

 _What shook him most of all was the look of cruelty on Dudley's face._

" _I heard you last night," his cousin said in a breathless voice as though he had come sprinting from a distance just to deliver this message, whatever it was. "Talking in your sleep. Moaning."_

" _What do you mean?" the other him demanded, sounding just as confused as Harry felt. That at least was a welcome change._

 _Dudley laughed, and the sound would have made Harry flinch if he was at all in control of his body. That did not sound at all like Dudley. Not in sixteen years had Harry heard that mocking, hateful laugh come from that face. Dudley's face twisted, and he continued in a high-pitched whimper. "_ 'Don't kill Cedric! Don't kill Cedric!' _Who's Cedric? Your boyfriend?"_

 _The identity of this Cedric person was, just like Ron before him, a very good question._

" _I— you're lying—" the other him said in a tight voice that would not have convinced a deaf man that he was confident about what he was saying._

" 'Dad! Help me, Dad! He's going to kill me, Dad!' _" Dudley continued mercilessly. He brought his fat fists up to his eyes and pantomimed crying. "Boo-hoo!"_

Harry blinked and found himself staring at his own face in the disc. This vision made even less sense than the first, mostly because unlike the alternate Hermione, he had a hard time believing that was actually Dudley. Not because of his appearance, although that was also a surprise. It was harder to believe than Hermione somehow losing her ears, but not by much.

No, it was because that person with Dudley's face did not _act_ like Dudley in the slightest.

He knew that way back in the distant past, he and Dudley had not exactly gotten along, but that was when they were _kids_. Back when Dudley had copied Vernon in every respect without thinking, including his casual hate of anything Vernon thought was 'unnatural'. Dudley had grown out of that and started thinking on his own shortly after the Transition, and by the time he and Harry were nine or ten, they had been as thick as thieves. When they were fourteen and running away from Whinging Village, they were practically brothers and considered each other to be the only real family each other had.

His frown deepened. That was the other thing wrong with this vision. Dudley was quick to forgive people whom he considered friends. How often had they gotten into an argument about something stupid only for Dudley to have already forgiven and forgotten when Harry finally pulled his head out of his arse and tried to make amends? What could have possibly happened, then, to create such a tremendous rift between them?

He turned to look at Dudley, who had moved to stand next to Hermione and Draco, and his cousin shook his head. "I don't think you should touch that thing again, cuz."

"I…" Harry's eyes moved to Draco, and he bit his lip. "There's one more thing I want to check."

Turning around, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Hermione had not seemed to be a friend in that vision. Dudley had flat-out hated him. What about Draco? Draco was a wizard, and alternate him looked like a wizard. They were the same age, so they should have been classmates. The real him liked Draco and considered him a friend, and Draco apparently felt the same. Maybe, just maybe, that was a friendship that would be translated in that strange world where the disc was grabbing these visions.

Maybe things would be fine, he told himself as he reached for the disc with fear beating a tattoo in his chest.

 _He slid through a puddle of water, nearly losing his balance and falling backwards. The water itself was spraying like a fountain from an elaborate ring of sinks in a room built entirely from stone. The walls looked too much like those of Hogwarts to be anywhere else, which if nothing else confirmed that he had indeed been training as a wizard in this place._

 _Another figure jumped out from behind the sink. Harry instantly recognized it as Draco, dressed in black robes just as he and the redhead had been in the first vision but wearing a necktie with green and silver stripes rather than red and yellow. Draco had an Earth wand in his hand that was trained on Harry, and the blond's face was pale like that of a corpse. That pallor and the wild look in his eyes was an expression Harry had seen once before, when they had run around in panic trying not to get eaten by the basilisk at the top of the Trial of the Body and Soul._

 _It was an expression of pure terror._

"Cruci _—" Draco began to shout, but Harry was faster._

"SECTUMSEMPRA _!"_

 _The Earth wand in Harry's own hand made three slashes as though he were wielding a sword. With the first, a line of crimson scored Draco's face and spurted out blood. An inch higher and it would have carved out his right eye. The second caught him on the upper chest, ripping through his robes. The last was the worst and sliced him from shoulder to the opposite hip._

 _Draco took a single staggering step backwards before he fell bonelessly to the hard stone floor, and almost instantly the puddle in which he fell turned from clear to red._

"No!" Harry shouted, ripping his hand away from the disc like it had been burned. "I won't! If that's what Earth holds, then I want no part of it!"

It was as if the disc had simply been waiting for his decision. As soon as those words left his mouth, it started rising into the air again, growing and breaking apart as the fragments reformed into the rainbow-colored rings they had been when Harry first laid eyes on them. A wave of visible force erupted from the rings and swept through him, shoving him back a step. The magic in his veins sang as it passed, feeling more solid, more _him_ , than he could ever recall in his life.

"What… have you… done?" a whispery voice asked. Harry spun around to find that Dumbledore had cracked his eyes open, the ruin of his face splitting open and oozing fluid. "That was… our only… way home…"

Home? _Home_?! Harry slashed his hand through the air and then flinched as the motion reminded him of how he had waved the wand that murdered Draco. "That is no home of mine," he said, doing his best to force the images from that vision out of his mind. "It is not a place I will ever willingly go. Not after what I saw. Your Earth can burn for all I care. I'm staying here on Gaia."

At least here, he was not a monster.

"Then you have… doomed us… all."

A door slammed on the opposite side of the room, and Harry whipped his head around as the memory of just what lurked outside that door came back in full force. The good thing as far as he was concerned was that it was not a horde of dragon-headed swordsmen that came pouring through the door. The bad thing? Neither was it the rest of the wizards who came to the temple with them.

What walked through the door instead was just one dragon-man, this one dragging a long-handled axe-like weapon on the ground behind him. It took a look at them before continuing its inexorable and deadly advance. Harry growled through his teeth and drew his rapier as the others readied their own weapons. Just when this situation could not get any worse!

 _ **TOCK.**_

The bone-rattling sound came from above and behind them, from the very rings they had just fought to protect. A brisk wind broke against Harry's back, and he spun around fully expecting some other horror to be coming for them. What he saw instead was a portion of empty air changing color and swirling in place as though he were getting drunk just looking at it. The distortion grew, and when it did the center became calm like the eye of a storm. The strange part was that the eye did not show the opposite wall; it showed a clearing in a forest.

It showed a way out of this place before they all got killed.

"Let's get out of here!" he shouted. Fitting action to words, he ran towards the distortion. Was this a trap? Was trusting it foolish? Maybe. Probably, even. But right now he would take the possibility of life-threatening danger over a certainty. Everything he had seen of the sword-wielding statues told him clearly that they were not foes he and his friends could defeat.

There was no transition when he ran through the distortion. One moment, he was in the inner sanctum of the temple. The next, he was standing in the forest on the other side. "Come on, come on!" he yelled, only to move out of the way when first Draco and then Dudley came through as well.

Hermione was not behind them.

He looked through the portal again and found the Stellis still in the temple and kneeling next to Dumbledore. At first he thought she was trying to help him up, but a blink and a squint made it clear this was not the case. Her hands were shoved inside his robes and moving around as though she were rummaging through his pockets. So involved was she in her looting that she was blind to the axe-bearing dragon-man still marching towards them.

"You don't have time to pick his pockets! Get out of there!"

Hermione looked over her shoulder at the dragon-man and jumped to her feet. A few seconds later, she was sprinting through the portal as well. The guard did not change its pace, neither hurrying nor slowing down. Only when it reached the old wizard did it stop in its tracks and look down at him.

Then it raised its weapon above its head.

The distortion collapsed on itself as the axe came down, vanishing entirely just before the blow itself. All that was left was the four Adventures and a forest that was positively idyllic compared to where they were before.

"Uh," Dudley said, looking around at the trees surrounding them. "Dumb question. Does anybody know where we are?"

* * *

 **The snippets in italics are from books 5 and 6, obviously, just from a slightly different perspective. Context is an invaluable thing.**

 **Just the epilogue still to go. That will come out next week.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


	19. New Game Plus

**replies**

* * *

 **Epilogue  
** **New Game Plus**

Harry set down the four tankards of ale he picked up at the bar and pulled one to his seat. "To all that being over."

"Hear, hear," Dudley cheered, grabbing his own ale.

"Easy for you to say," muttered Draco, eventually grabbing the last mug for himself. "You realize I never got the gold for all the mana I collected, right? Now I have a bunch of jars that are good for pretty much nothing."

Hermione reached over to pat him on the back. "You said you don't know why Gaian wands can't cast Earth spells when the opposite is true, didn't you? Maybe you can experiment."

"I guess."

Shaking his head, Harry just sat back and took in the ambiance of the bar they had discovered as they made the trek back from the woods where the temple dropped them off. They had no clue where they were, but they knew that no matter where they landed they would need to Diagon Village to pick up Draco's mustid. Thankfully it took less than a day to find a little town called Carrowton, which it seemed to be the only settlement at all for miles and miles. The only reason they had found it at all was thanks to the compass they claimed from the Trial of the Mind, and already he could see it was far more useful than they first assumed.

He just would have preferred it if Carrowton had more going for it than a mustid stable, a few farms, and a little bar and inn called the Lovely Goat.

Harry forced himself to relax. He and Dudley had been in plenty of places that were no better. Scunth, where they met Hermione, was just one example. No, in reality he had to admit that it was the owner of this bar that put him on edge. The man's white beard and blue eyes were too familiar by half to those they had seen on Dumbledore. He caught himself watching the bartender again and shook his head. It was probably just that the old wizard's death was still such a recent memory, causing him to see similarities that were not truly there.

"Even if I do experiments, that still needs resources. Not to mention food for me," Draco continued after a few moments. "That's the problem. I always wound up investing most of the money I made from that mana into hiring people to find and retrieve the next batch. I have some money squirreled away, but not enough to live off of for long."

Dudley slung one arm over his shoulder. "Sounds like you'll have to get a real job like the rest of us, then."

The Sorcerer groaned and dropped his head onto his arm.

Harry shook his head with a smile and turned to Hermione. "What about you? What kind of plans do you have in front of you?"

Rather than return his jibe as he expected, Hermione frowned. "I really don't know. I want to head back to the Riverlands for a bit to check on Geoff's sister. By now the alchemist should have been able to prepare Sandalphon's Sigh for her, so I'm hoping she'll be healed. After that? I don't really know." She looked up and shrugged. "I spent the last few months with Geoff and his crew working on that. Besides, it isn't like I have a normal group I need to get back to. I guess I'll just… wander around and see what kind of work is available?"

That was right, Harry thought to himself. She had told him herself that she did not have a set group because she had yet to find a party she liked enough to join long-term. He would be sad to see her go; even knowing her for just a couple of weeks, it was clear they worked together well.

A slow blink, and he looked from Hermione to Draco and then to Dudley. The Knight caught his eyes and frowned, not seeing the possibility that had just crossed Harry's mind.

"So you don't have any jobs lined up, and Draco doesn't want to have to go out looking for jobs in the first place." Hermione nodded, and Draco gave him a grunt of acknowledgement. "Dud and I don't have any firm plans either, but something we've noticed is that a lot of jobs are easier with more people, and a bigger party opens up the possibility for bigger and better opportunities."

 _Now_ Dudley was following, and Hermione also appeared to have caught on. "What exactly are you proposing?" she asked.

"I'm just thinking out loud," he answered with a nonchalant shrug. "I know I've enjoyed working alongside both of you, and Dudley at least hasn't complained about it."

"Nah, it's been fun," Dudley agreed.

"It'll depend on the two of you, obviously, but if we get along and work well together, maybe it would be worthwhile for us to stick together for a while longer. If nothing else, there's safety in numbers in case Neville's mad science project gets loose."

"Don't joke about that," Draco warned, though when he raised his head a faint smile was playing on his lips. "That's the stuff nightmares are made of.

"But…" He tapped his fingers on the table for a moment. "I wouldn't be against working together. I did just say I don't have anything better to do for the moment."

"If things didn't work out, there wouldn't be problems if we split up and ran into each other later on, right?" Hermione asked, her ears sinking. "I mean, things have been fine so far, but just in case…"

Harry looked back at Dudley, who shrugged. "If things don't work out, they don't work out. No hard feelings."

"Okay. Then I'm in."

"Brilliant." He leaned back in his chair before another thought came to mind. "Then again, we still don't have any idea of where to go, but that we can figure out as we go, I guess."

Hermione smiled and reached into her pouch. "I think I can help out with that one." Bringing her hand back into few, she laid a tube of paper on the table and unrolled it to reveal green continents and red ley lines.

"That's why you were digging through Dumbledore's pockets!" Harry exclaimed as realization hit.

She shrugged, her smile growing wider and toothier. "It didn't seem like he was going to get much use out of it. We, on the other hand, will."

"It sounds like you already have a plan," Draco pointed out.

"Not a plan, exactly. More an ultimate goal." She shrugged and tapped the western continent. "We would need money to buy supplies, a ship, and a crew, and we probably need to gather some fame to make all those easier, but I'd like to see what's going on in one of these other continents. How have people there reacted to the Transition? Are there different races on each island? I have so many questions now."

"Then we better get to answering them," Harry said as a bright smile of his own appeared. "We have a whole world to explore, and suddenly I don't know if one lifetime will be enough to see everything it has to offer."

* * *

 **And that is Eternal Fantasy. Took way longer to get here than it should have with less than I initially envisioned, but sometimes that's just the way it goes. I will say that once I sat down to finish it, the last four chapters came a lot easier than the ones preceding it.**

 **Not to mention, I already have another story that is starting to dribble out my ears. You can find chapter 1 of Spells in Silence on my profile page. I have a suspicion it will come significantly easier if the speed with which I wrote that chapter is any indication.**

 **Silently Watches out.**


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